An Accelerated Deterioration

With the exception of his mindless cheerleaders and coterie of sycophants, it is obvious to the world that Donald Trump has led the United States into a steep, perhaps irreversible, decline. His response to the Covid-19 crisis has only accelerated that process.

And the public record, unlike Trump, does not lie.

About his early response to the crisis, Edward Luce writes:

People often observed during Trump’s first three years that he had yet to be tested in a true crisis. Covid-19 is way bigger than that. “Trump’s handling of the pandemic at home and abroad has exposed more painfully than anything since he took office the meaning of America First,” says William Burns, who was the most senior US diplomat, and is now head of the Carnegie Endowment.

“America is first in the world in deaths, first in the world in infections and we stand out as an emblem of global incompetence. The damage to America’s influence and reputation will be very hard to undo.”

Trump's refusal to heed warnings about what was coming was nothing short of criminal, and will likely be apparent to all if and when a commission of inquiry into the pandemic response is struck:

The inquiry would find that Trump was warned countless times of the epidemic threat in his presidential daily briefings, by federal scientists, the health secretary Alex Azar, Peter Navarro, his trade adviser, Matt Pottinger, his Asia adviser, by business friends and the world at large. Any report would probably conclude that tens of thousands of deaths could have been prevented – even now as Trump pushes to “liberate” states from lockdown.

“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University. “Trump could have prevented mass deaths and he didn’t.”

True to form, the Infant-in-Chief blames others for his manifest failures, China and The Who not the least:

A meeting of G7 foreign ministers in March failed to agree on a statement after Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, insisted they brand it the “Wuhan virus”.

Most dramatically, Trump has suspended US funding of the WHO, which he says covered up for China’s lying.

Trump alleged the WHO’s negligence had increased the world’s death rate “twenty-fold”. In practice, the body must always abide by member state limits, especially the big ones, notably the US and China. That is the reality for all multilateral bodies. The WHO nevertheless declared an international emergency six weeks before Trump’s US announcement.

So where does all the blaming, the posturing, the incompetence of a depraved president lead to?

Early into his partial about-turn, Trump said scientists told him that up to 2.5 million Americans could die of the disease. The most recent estimates suggest 135,000 Americans will die by late July. That means two things.

First, Trump will tell voters that he has saved millions of lives. Second, he will continue to push aggressively for US states to lift their lockdowns. His overriding goal is to revive the economy before the general election. Both Trump and Kushner have all but declared mission accomplished on the pandemic. “This is a great success story,” said Kushner in late April. “We have prevailed,” said Trump on Monday.

It is the kind of simpleminded triumphal language that a nation weary of restrictions and given to uncritical acceptance of Trumpisms welcomes, but it doesn't change reality.

And it doesn't change a truth recently uttered by George Conway, husband of one of Trump's chief promoters, Kelly Anne Conway, about the lamentably ill-equipped president:

“In my view he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist. When a person suffering from these disorders feels the world closing in on them, their tendencies get worse. They lash out and fantasize and lose any ability to think rationally.”

A terrible combination in the best of times. A literally lethal one is these worst of times.

I Rest My Case

Yesterday I offered, shall we say, an unflattering appraisal of the American 'character' and psyche. Further evidence supporting that assessment is to be found in the following video:



Perhaps those of similar disposition dying for a night out on the town should ponder this cautionary tale?

An Armchair Analysis

One of the benefits (and, to be honest, drawbacks) of having a blog is the freedom it confers on the owner. He or she can write on a range of topics which, in my case, is sometimes determined by the mood I'm in. And these days, that mood is often less one of outrage than it is of resignation. The belly fire that once drove me is now often but a vaguely uncomfortable feeling easy to ignore.

But I do soldier on, in fits and starts.

Since compelling empirical proof is hardly a requirement for blog opinions, I shall offer one today about the United States of America. It will hardly be a shattering insight, merely one I have been thinking about more and more during these days of confinement and reading.

The United States of America is an infantile nation.

Consider but a few examples. There is the violence incited by refusal to wear masks; there are the states reopening despite rising numbers of Covid-19 infections; there is fairly widespread defiance of state laws through protests and illegal re-openings of shuttered businesses. And, of course, there is their selection of the Orange Idiot to lead their nation.

Clearly, the United States lacks the kind of character that the world's current situation demands.

Recently, while watching a commercial during the American news, something else also occurred to me. They haven't always been this benighted and childish.

Allow me to illustrate with a few American Public Service Announcements.

The first one is from many years ago; those of a certain age will remember Perry Mason who, each week, bested District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the courtroom. The actor who played him, William Talman, made an anti-smoking ad in 1968 when he was dying from lung cancer:



You will notice that the tone is poignant as Talman invokes the powerful images of his family to show the terrible losses he is facing, urging viewers either not to take up smoking or to quit if they are already in its grips. No one could argue that such an ad is shocking or graphic in any way.

Contrast that restrained tone with what is on offer today:









Each of the above PSAs approach the viewer in a way far different than the Talman ad did, replacing reason and poignancy with what are guaranteed to reach a blunted, debased sensibility: fear and repugnance. If this won't get you to quit smoking, nothing will, eh?

What is my point? Only to suggest that those commercials can serve as a measure of the undeniable decline in the American character. Where once reason and basic sentiment might have served public discourse well, today fear has become the weapon of choice to influence people's behaviour.

And the use of that weapon is most evident in contemporary American politics. The Trump playbook, the one that serves him so very well, is a textbook example. Fear of the other, the Mexican rapists and drug dealers who must be held at bay by massive walls, the deep state conspirators, the Wuhan virus and so many more are all part of his abysmal arsenal.

And the Pavlovian dogs salivate.

Call The Libertarians!

Reader Brian sent this along to me this morning. Enjoy!

Though they've been a tad quiet during the CoVid 19 Semi-Apocalypse, all you need to do to get by is put your trust in the folks who can solve any problem:

The Libertarians!

This Puts Things Into Perspective

Don't cha think?

How to testing pic.twitter.com/y9iwLK0N12

— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) May 9, 2020

Setting The Record Straight

If you watched Planet of The Humans, executive-produced by Michael Moore, like me you probably came away profoundly disillusioned. The film essentially says that the environmental movement and its advocacy for alternative energy sources is a house of cards and a big scam. From biomass to EV batteries to solar panels and turbines, the point is made over and over that they consume prodigious amounts of energy to produce, and the savings over the long term in greenhouse gas emissions are negligible at best.

Fortunately, there has been fierce rebuttal to the claims the film makes. One of them is by Bill McKibben, one of the patron saints of the environmental movement, in a lengthy Rolling Stone article, well-worth the read.

Another is by the always readable and always intelligent George Monbiot, who writes that the film is a gift to climate-change deniers who have for years been using discredited myths promoted in the film to justify their position.

Occasionally, the film lands a punch on the right nose. It is right to attack the burning of trees to make electricity. But when the film’s presenter and director, Jeff Gibbs, claims, “I found only one environmental leader willing to reject biomass and biofuels”, he can’t have been looking very far. Some people have been speaking out against them ever since they became a serious proposition (since 2004 in my case). Almost every environmental leader I know opposes the burning of fresh materials to generate power.

There are also some genuine and difficult problems with renewable energy, particularly the mining of the necessary materials. But the film’s attacks on solar and wind power rely on a series of blatant falsehoods. It claims that, in producing electricity from renewables, “You use more fossil fuels to do this than you’re getting benefit from it. You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place”. This is flat wrong. On average, a solar panel generates 26 units of solar energy for every unit of fossil energy required to build and install it. For wind turbines the ratio is 44 to one.

Planet of the Humans also claims that you can’t reduce fossil fuel use through renewable energy: coal is instead being replaced by gas. Well, in the third quarter of 2019, renewables in the UK generated more electricity than coal, oil and gas plants put together. As a result of the switch to renewables in this country, the amount of fossil fuel used for power generation has halved since 2010. By 2025, the government forecasts, roughly half our electricity will come from renewables, while gas burning will drop by a further 40%.

While Monbiot concedes the film's assertion that a good number of conservation groups take money from fossil fuel companies, he says its relentless attack on 350.org co-founder McKibben is misplaced, as he

takes no money from any of his campaigning work. It’s an almost comic exercise in misdirection, but unfortunately it has horrible, real-world consequences, as McKibben now faces even more threats and attacks than he confronted before.

Monbiot sees the film's 'final solution' as something of a red herring, snce it claims that only by seeing a mass die-off of an overpopulated world can there be any hope:

Yes, population growth does contribute to the pressures on the natural world. But while the global population is rising by 1% a year, consumption, until the pandemic, was rising at a steady 3%. High consumption is concentrated in countries where population growth is low. Where population growth is highest, consumption tends to be extremely low. Almost all the growth in numbers is in poor countries largely inhabited by black and brown people. When wealthy people, such as Moore and Gibbs, point to this issue without the necessary caveats, they are saying, in effect, “it’s not Us consuming, it’s Them breeding.” It’s not hard to see why the far right loves this film.

No one can ever accuse me of having an especially sunny disposition or optimistic outlook. Nonetheless, I was heartened to read this piece by George Monbiot. In these terrible times, I will take good news wherever I can find it.

Simply Ghoulish

Vampire. https://t.co/oGRr8I2HhD

— Gord Perks (@gordperks) May 6, 2020

A Soul Soother For These Troubled Times

Baroque music AND a livestream of Venice. I return to this several times a day.

A Fairy Tale

Frank Sinatra sang that fairy tales can come true. One hopes he was right.



H/t Marie Snyder

A Tale Of Two Countries

Each night I allow myself a half-hour dose of news from an American perspective, usually NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. And every night I emerge from the experience immensely thankful that I live in Canada rather than the Benighted States of America. The chasm between our two countries is ever-widening.

In Canada, we have a variety of programs in place supporting a wide swath of Canadians. While none of the supports are perfect and can never replace the income provided by jobs, they have allowed the federal government and the provinces to prioritize public health and safety over the economy. Indeed, the expenditures to date open up a myriad of possibilities for post-pandemic Canada as citizens ponder the possibilities of a newer, better Canada.

Not so south of the border. There, the ugliness of Darwinian neoliberalism is in full view.

When watching the news from there, one sees the ever-strident demands of increasingly desperate people to re-open the economy. Indeed, by Monday more than 30 states, despite the fact that they are nowhere near flattening the curve of Covid-19 spread, will be open. In all the cases, posing as champions of the people, politicians are showing their willingness to sacrifice people to the demands of the economy.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the meat-packing industry. Despite their being repositories of Covid-19 disease and death, that master narcissist, Donald Trump, has mandated they remain open through executive order. Had Americans the capacity for critical thinking, they would realize that they are mere fodder for the economy worshiped and extolled by their neoliberal masters.

The Guardian reports:

The president invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to mandate meat processing plants stay open during the pandemic.

The move, which essentially labels meat production an essential service, also offers further measures to protect the industry from legal liability should more workers contract the virus.

If one reads the link, one sees that U.S. Labor Department refers to "guidance," not requirements, as to the safe operation of the plants during this pandemic. In other words, there are no penalties if that guidance isn't followed.

Those penalties instead will be borne by the workers by the requirement that they work in life-threatening situations for wages that are not even living ones.

The Tyson company itself seems to have played a major role in Trump's executive order:

The order came within hours of Tyson, a $22bn company and the world’s second largest meat processor, taking out paid adverts in major US newspapers, including the New York Times, to warn that recent closures of a handful of plants due to the virus could lead to “limited supply of our products”.

Prior to Trump's Hail-Mary pass to win votes, (after all, 'Muricans got to have their meat), death was already stalking meat-packing firms, in many ways making them slaughter houses within slaughter houses:

News of the first Covid-19 death at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, south-west Georgia, spread slowly.

“It was like they were keeping a secret,” said Tara Williams, a 47-year-old worker at the plant, as she described her account of management’s response to the death of her colleague Elose Willis. “It took them about two weeks to just put a picture up, to acknowledge she had died.”

Williams had worked alongside Willis in the “de-boning” section of the plant until she died on 1 April, aged 56. She had spent 35 years at the facility – five days a week, 10 hours a day, 100,000 slaughtered chickens a shift.

Willis was the first Tyson employee to succumb to Covid-19 at the Camilla plant, but two others would follow in short succession, a marker of the precarity faced by thousands of meat processing workers pushed to toil, closely packed, on the frontlines throughout the pandemic in plants that have quickly become coronavirus hotspots. At least 20 meat packing workers have died from the virus nationwide and 5,000 have become infected, according to union officials, as close to two dozen facilities closed – some temporarily – over past few weeks.

As per the corporate agenda, it is the worker who is obliged to make sacrifices, including the ultimate one.

For Tara Williams, who has worked at the Camilla plant on the overnight shift as a packing scanner for five years earning $13.55 an hour, Trump’s executive order and her company’s adverts were another blow in her fight for workers’ rights.

“I was devastated and I was hurt. Because now, to be truthful – and excuse my language – Tyson really aren’t going to give a fuck about us at all,” she said. “For us employees that work in production, we are treated like modern day slaves.”

Although there is much more to the Guardian article, which I would encourage everyone to read, it somehow seems apt to end this post with that stinging rebuke and indictment from Ms. Williams.

A Graphic Illustration Of Why Peter MacKay Is Unfit To Hold Public Office

As a Nova Scotian, I am outraged that Justin Trudeau is using our tragedy to punish law-abiding firearms owners across Canada.

As Prime Minister, I can guarantee to all Canadians that I will never take advantage of a tragedy like this to push a political agenda. pic.twitter.com/pWDAv4TiwN

— Peter MacKay (@PeterMacKay) May 1, 2020

A Glitch In The Machine

Watch the following, and you will understand.

Zen And The Art Of Gorilla-Watching

Try it sometime. You might like it.

No Comfort From Chris Hedges

Reading Chris Hedges is never a fell-good experience. His unflinching assessments, his unsparingly bleak prognostications, offer no comfort. During the very trying times we are currently living through, why subject yourself to his analyses?

For a very simple reason: better a bitter truth than a sweet lie.

An interview in Salon shows that Hedges has little hope for any kind of renaissance in the United States after the Covid-19 crisis abates. There is a deep underlying rot:

The country's infrastructure is rotting. Trump presides over a plutocratic, corrupt, cruel, authoritarian, pathological kakistocracy. [I had to look that word up.] The commons is being reduced to rubble while the ultra-rich extract ever more wealth and other resources from the American people. Excessive military spending has left the United States incapable of attending to the basic needs of its people. A culture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Our public educational system does not teach critical thinking skills. Radical right-wing Christians, white terrorist organizations and other neofascist paramilitaries and extremists are engaging in a campaign of thuggery, intimidation and violence against multiracial American democracy.

As handled by Trump, the coronona virus is but a foretaste of things to come,

as social inequality and political failure combine to create a full collapse of the country's already declining standard of living, as well as its ailing democracy.

And those who think the Democratic Party in general, and Joe Biden in particular, are capable of reviving the U.S. are deluding themselves:

Why? Because the Democrats are also part of the plutocratic establishment that has failed the American people.

Twelve hundred dollars to individuals suffering during this crisis is not sufficient. The Democrats were only really trying to block the equivalent of a $500 billion slush fund that is going into Mnuchin's hands, a man who acts like a criminal. That $1,200 is going to get vacuumed right up by the credit card companies and the banks who hold the mortgages.

The belief that Americans have a real electoral choice is an error in thinking.

America's current political system is a corporate political duopoly. A person can either vote for nativists and racists and climate deniers and creationists on one end, or a person can vote for people who speak in the language of tolerance and are willing to put gay people or women or people of color into positions of power as long as they serve the system.

In voting for Joe Biden, Americans will be voting for more of the same.

What is Biden's record? What is a person voting for if they back Biden on Election Day 2020?

The humiliation of courageous women like Anita Hill who confronted her abuser. You vote for the architects of endless war. You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. Biden supports those things. With Biden you are voting for wholesale surveillance by the government, including the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You vote for austerity programs. You vote for the destruction of welfare. That was Biden. You vote for cuts to Social Security, which he has repeatedly called for cutting, along with Medicaid. You vote for NAFTA, you vote for "free trade" deals. If you vote for Biden, you are voting for a real decline in wages and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

With Biden you are also voting for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds to Christian "charter schools." With Biden you are voting for more than a doubling of the prison population. With Biden you are voting for the militarized police and against the Green New Deal.

You are also voting to limit a woman's right to abortion and reproductive rights. You are voting for a segregated public school system. With Biden you are voting for punitive levels of student debt and the inability of people to free themselves of that debt through bankruptcy. A vote for Biden is a vote for deregulating banking and finance. Biden also supports for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

A vote for Biden is also a vote against the possibility of universal health care. You vote for Biden and you are supporting huge, wasteful and bloated defense budgets. Biden also supports unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy the elections.

That's what you're voting for.

Things are very hard for all of us these days. If you accept Chris Hedges' dour outlook, there is much worse to come for the Benighted States of America.

"I'd Die For A Haircut"

Live in one of several jurisdictions in the Benighted States of America, you could very well get your wish:

But A Brief Reprieve

If our thoughts have been able, even briefly, to break out of their ongoing obsession with Covid-19 and death, we will have realized a couple of things:

One, that we really aren't masters of the universe, our supposed natural supremacy just a cruel delusion that has led us to this particular juncture in history. An invisible presence has sent us scurrying to our basements. How truly humbling.

And two, that our forced confinement has been extraordinarily beneficial to the environment, with a reported global average drop of 6% in greenhouse gas emissions; it is an improvement, however, that isn't nearly enough to mitigate climate change and will likely prove ephemeral.

But I fear these realizations will prove to be short-lived. Forced contemplation and reflection are uncomfortable. Teachable moments pass; lessons learned are quickly forgotten. Already, we passionately pine for a return to a normal that was never normal: getting and spending, overpopulating the earth, plundering the world's pantry with barely a second thought.

Yet some are hopeful that we can mend our ways, and that current hard-won environmental benefits can be retained:

...climate scientists and activists hope this moment can be a turning point, when our efforts to combat one global crisis inspire action against another, and governments use their unprecedented spending on economic recovery to accelerate a transition away from fossil fuels and toward a green economy.

Robin Edger, executive director and CEO of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, sees this as our last, best chance:

Even before the pandemic it was going to take a massive investment and radical change to meet these targets, Edger said. “We were already talking about a public mobilization along the lines of nothing we’d seen since the Second World War. So now we’ve had this economic collapse as a result of a health crisis and the government has a choice to make: Are we going to make investments in line with our country’s stated climate goals and set ourselves up for the future, or are we going to try to cling to the past and pour money into shovel-ready but unsustainable projects?”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used the occasion of Earth Day earlier this week to draw a parallel between the global efforts to fight COVID-19 and climate change, calling the climate crisis an “even deeper emergency” and urging governments to target their economic recoveries toward a more sustainable future. “The current crisis is an unprecedented wake-up call,” he said. “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.”

Chantal Hebert, on the other hand, is dubious of the prospects for progress as she recalls what happened to Stephan Dion's Green Shift platform in the midst of the 2008 world financial crisis:

The 2008 storm hit as voters were headed to the polls in a federal election.

One of its immediate consequences was to sweep the campaign carpet from under then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and his climate-change platform.

As attention shifted to the quickly deteriorating economic scene, Dion came to look as if he had brought the wrong lines to the electoral audition. A plurality of voters opted to keep Stephen Harper in the role of prime minister.

Only a few months before the federal campaign, the climate-change issue had legs. It faltered quickly in the face of a looming recession.

Will history repeat itself under the Covid-19 scourge?

Back in October, an overwhelming majority of voters supported parties that promised more proactive measures to mitigate climate change.

An equally high proportion of Canadians also told pollsters that strong environmental credentials — in the shape of a credible climate change plan — should be a must for any party aspiring to power.

But whether the public and political commitment to addressing climate change will remain strong as minds shift to repairing the damage of the pandemic remains an open question.

Already, polls are showing a shift in voters’ priorities, with climate change taking more of a back seat not only to the economy but also to health care.

Will cash-strapped governments, under the gun to restore some sense of normalcy to the daily lives of Canadians in time for their next electoral appointments, be in a good place to walk the talk of a green big picture?

Will we prove to be apt students as we move forward? My three decades as a teacher require a less than definitive answer.

And the greatest teacher of all, history, unfortunately renders a far less ambiguous answer.

The Relentless, Indefatigable Chip Franklin

Most days I stop myself from reposting Chip Franklin's hilarious screeds. Today is not one of those days.

If you're a Trumper, and you think I'm a liberal doling out fake news, then make yourself a Clorox cocktail, get a few X-rays and book the next flight to Georgia. Let me know how that works out for ya...https://t.co/i17FfR2vAx pic.twitter.com/VqFOYYl8x6

— Chip Franklin (@chipfranklin) April 24, 2020

UPDATED: Another Sad, Mad Episode

Listening to Donald Trump prattle on is like bearing witness to the stream-of-consciousness ravings of a backward, depraved child:

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,” Trump said. “One minute! And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

Dr Deborah Birx, the taskforce response coordinator, remained silent. But social media erupted in hilarity and outrage at the president, who has a record of defying science and also floated the idea of treating patients’ bodies with ultraviolet (UV) light.

I'll leave the final word to Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics:

“It is incomprehensible to me that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid enough to think this is OK. I can’t believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you.”

P.S. Should you be wondering how the Twitterverse is reacting, click here.

I am particularly fond of this one:

Lysol Counters Trump Briefing: Do Not Ingest Disinfectants. Normally they only need to worry about children or suicidal people ingesting their product, not psychotic president’s trying to kill their own people #lysol #disinfectant #injectingdisinfectant https://t.co/BBi4Aj2eXP

— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) April 24, 2020

UPDATE:

The Hits Keep Coming.

This certainly beats having to write something for my blog. Thanks to my friend Dom for sending me the following:

With A Little Help From The Feds

Sorry (not really); I just can't help myself:

Streaming 24 Hours A Day

The United States may be an empire in deep and irreversible decline, but it continues to excel in one area: comedy of the absurd. Its citizenry's irrational antics amply serve both as entertainment to saner jurisdictions and sobering indictments of exactly how low the human animal can sink:

To All Trump Enthusiasts Everywhere

I'm sure your master endorses this message.



Meanwhile, Heather Mallick has an interesting explanation for the servile attitude so many Americans have toward their clown president.

Why do Americans, alleged rugged individualists, upholders of liberty, haters of king and government, put up with this grotesque man? They’re in the habit of doing so, some American observers have said. Most presidents — thought not Nixon or Dubya — generally talked sense before and Americans grew used to listening.

But it’s more than habit. Americans bow down to authority just as Britons do to monarchs and aristocrats; they doff their cap. They actually play a silly song, “Hail to the Chief,” when a president enters a room and have done so since 1829.

Americans worship titles. We refer to former prime ministers, but a president is called President for the rest of his life. On political talking heads shows, a long-retired diplomat is always called “Ambassador.” Generals remain generals even after retirement, which seems hopelessly pompous.

For me, however, the crowning element of her article is her invocation of some classic Shakespearean insults she deems particularly fitting to lob at the mendacious, inept, sociopathic American president:

“He’s a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker.” “Thou cream-faced loon! Where got’st thou that goose look?” “Nut-hook, nut-hook, you lie.” “Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon”

“That trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend Vice, that grey Iniquity, that father Ruffian, that Vanity in years?”

Shakespeare truly was a man for all time.

Build That Wall!

It is our only hope of keeping out citizens of the Benighted States of America such as these:

Essential Activities, Essential Idiocy

God love the Americans. No one else will.

This Is Absolutely Ghoulish

First it was Dr. Oz betraying his Hippocratic Oath.



Now Dr. Phil has joined the movement as he and the ever-compassionate Laura Ingraham discuss why the lockdown should end. Start at about the 2:00 minute mark:

The Weakest Link

There has been much criticism worldwide over national governments' failures to act quickly enough to contain the spread of Covid-19; one needs only look at the frightening death tolls in countries like Italy, Spain and the U.S. to appreciate the merit of such criticism. But in my view, much of that failure is a result of our refusal to recognize the interconnectedness of today's world.

When the bug first broke out in Wuhan, China, our initial response was to check all passengers travelling from the afflicted area. Not a bad first start perhaps, but it was predicated on the assumption that such people could be effectively isolated, an assumption that quickly proved illusory. Before long, cases with no known contacts with travellers arose. Community spread had begun.

The rest, of course, is very recent history, and the story is still unfolding.

If nothing else, this pandemic has been a pointed reminder that, thanks to contemporary technology, no nation or individual can successfully isolate from others. And as the following report by Redmond Shannon makes abundantly clear, until all countries have ready access to the equipment and medical support necessary to contain Covid-19 (and whatever pandemics follow it), no one will ever be truly secure.

Please start the following at the the 16:15 mark:

Pandemic: The Lessons On Offer

To say that our current Covid-19 global crisis is causing us to rethink many things is to state the obvious. Far and wide, people are coming to new understanding about their priorities, their values, and their attitudes toward others.

Suddenly, that spa treatment isn't so urgent; the coveted new outfit can wait; maybe the precariously-employed should have more stability and remuneration. That it takes a near-apocalyptic event to bring about such introspective cogitation likely reveals a great deal about our shortcomings as a species.

We have always mouthed platitudes about our essential workers, but now our appreciation of them feels more genuine, whether we are talking about medical personnel, grocery store workers, sanitation workers or mail carriers. But are we willing to go the distance for them when this catastrophe finally wanes?

History provides a mixed answer, according to history professor Walter Scheidel. The Black Death, caused by rat fleas carrying bubonic plague, started in the fall of 1347 and, over the next century and a half, (periodic flareups being the pattern,) likely killed one-third of Europe's people.

And it upended the socio-economic order, despite the old guard trying tenaciously to keep things as they had been for a very long time.

The wealthy found some of these changes alarming. In the words of an anonymous English chronicler, “Such a shortage of laborers ensued that the humble turned up their noses at employment, and could scarcely be persuaded to serve the eminent for triple wages.” Influential employers, such as large landowners, lobbied the English crown to pass the Ordinance of Laborers, which informed workers that they were “obliged to accept the employment offered” for the same measly wages as before.

But as successive waves of plague shrunk the work force, hired hands and tenants “took no notice of the king’s command,” as the Augustinian clergyman Henry Knighton complained. “If anyone wanted to hire them he had to submit to their demands, for either his fruit and standing corn would be lost or he had to pander to the arrogance and greed of the workers.”

Consequently, the worker finally caught a break, and a certain leveling occurred:

... wealth inequality in most of these places plummeted. In England, workers ate and drank better than they did before the plague and even wore fancy furs that used to be reserved for their betters. At the same time, higher wages and lower rents squeezed landlords, many of whom failed to hold on to their inherited privilege. Before long, there were fewer lords and knights, endowed with smaller fortunes, than there had been when the plague first struck.

But a worker's paradise was by no means established. While there were some successes, there also were many disappointments:

During the Great Rising of England’s peasants in 1381, workers demanded, among other things, the right to freely negotiate labor contracts. Nobles and their armed levies put down the revolt by force, in an attempt to coerce people to defer to the old order. But the last vestiges of feudal obligations soon faded. Workers could hold out for better wages, and landlords and employers broke ranks with each other to compete for scarce labor.

Elsewhere, however, repression carried the day. In late medieval Eastern Europe, from Prussia and Poland to Russia, nobles colluded to impose serfdom on their peasantries to lock down a depleted labor force. This altered the long-term economic outcomes for the entire region: Free labor and thriving cities drove modernization in western Europe, but in the eastern periphery, development fell behind.

In the end, true change proved elusive:

When population numbers recovered ... wages slid downward and elites were firmly back in control. ... In most European societies, disparities in income and wealth rose for four centuries all the way up to the eve of World War I. It was only then that a new great wave of catastrophic upheavals undermined the established order, and economic inequality dropped to lows not witnessed since the Black Death, if not the fall of the Roman Empire.

There are obvious parallels to be found in today's world. Employers such as Loblaw, Metro, Shoppers Drug Mart, Dollarama and Walmart have retroactively boosted the wages of their front-line employees, people bravely performing necessary work. Even banks are getting into the act, with the Royal Bank offering a $50 per day bonus for onsite workers who earn less than $65,000 per year. Notably, however, these boosts are temporary.

Clearly, there are lessons for all of us during this pandemic. Unlike earlier times, we have a much wider grasp of the world and our place in it. We have immense power to shape the future for the betterment of all that previous generations did not. If we elect to fall back into the patterns of the past, we will have made an informed choice, but it will be one that reveals much about our character as contemporary citizens of the world and as a species.

Decision time is here.

On Covid-19 Fake News

I received a lovely note the other day from a reader named Rose. While I am pleased she finds my blog a useful resource, I am also happy that she included a very pertinent link as an aide in spotting fake news, especially that involving our current pandemic. I shall return to that link in a moment.

But first, how big a problem is disinformation during this time of fear and uncertainty?

The Guardian cites the growing problem of prominent people who apparently have more fame than brains:

The actor Woody Harrelson and the singer MIA have faced criticism after sharing baseless claims about the supposed connection of 5G to the pandemic, while comments by the likes of the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, playing down the scale of the crisis in the face of scientific evidence have attracted criticism in recent days.

Such ravings have consequences.

The issue has gained extra prominence as Britons began vandalising mobile phone masts in recent days amid wildly sharing baseless claims linking the virus to 5G.

There is growing concern that online disinformation could be having real world health impacts. Research by Dr Daniel Allington, senior lecturer in social and cultural artificial intelligence at King’s College London, suggested there was a statistically notable link between people who believed false claims about the coronavirus and people who were willing to flout the government’s social distancing guidelines.

His findings, based on a experimental study conducted in coordination with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, found that people who said they believed coronavirus was connected to 5G mobile phone masts are less likely to be staying indoors, washing their hands regularly or respecting physical distancing.

Even more unhinged is Roseanne Barr who, in a phone interview with Norm Macdonald, had this to say about the bug:

"You know what it is, Norm? I think they're just trying to get rid of all my generation...."The boomer ladies that, you know, that inherited their — you know, are widows. They inherited the money so they got to go wherever the money is and figure out a way to get it away from people."

Barr made a number of other unorthodox claims during the interview: She argued that people are "being forced to evolve," urged working women to learn how to make bean soup, claimed that Chinese people eat bats and rats (and that she saw one guy eat a baby), and insisted that "there exists an operative in each town that reports back to Central Intelligence false information to ruin my career."

If you want to read more about this supremely unbalanced lady, Venay Menon has a droll take on her escapades.

Misinformation can be deadly, especially as it pertains to Covid-19. Perennial huckster/televangelist Jim Bakker is facing legal consequences after peddling a snake oil called Liquid Silver Sol he claimed would protect people from the bug. One hopes that the convicted felon pays a heavy price for his dangerous advocacy.

Which brings us back to the question of how to best inoculate ourselves against the virus of hysterical untruths. Readers of this blog will know that I have long been an advocate of critical thinking as the best protective; as I have said many times, it is an ideal toward which I continually strive, well-aware that I often fall short.

Reading widely of legitimate sources is a vital nutrient in this quest, but happily there are some readily accessible sites that make it easier. Snopes, of course, is one of the best. Its recent effort to dispel the myth that eating alkaline foods will confer protection against Covid-19 is an apt illustration of its usefulness.

A search engine can be of great benefit as well. Try putting the term fake news covid-19 into one and look at the results.

There are many, many useful resources on the web which I am confident you can access with little difficulty, and so I leave you with the site suggested by my correspondent Rose. Called Website Planet, it offers some very useful guidance and tools in our collective quest for truth and accuracy.

The Covid-19 virus is naturally dominating all of our concerns today. However, working to flatten the curve on the pandemic of misinformation that existed before and will continue long after the bug is managed will surely serve us well in the bigger picture known as everyday life, life that we will, eventually, return to.

A Sick Gorilla

I made the following comment on Owen's blog this morning regarding Donald Trump:

To watch Trump turn this thing [Covid-19 crisis] into a personal exercise of ego and imbecility makes me believe we live next door to an egregiously backward nation, one that can no longer command any worldwide respect.

May that contagion never spread.

Clearly, I am not alone in that view. In today's Star, Bruce Arthur offers this observation:

... we don’t have a North American ally anymore .... We have a sick gorilla in a cage, and we have to constantly worry how it might lash out.

... it is obvious to anybody who watches Donald Trump for five minutes that the man is a wicked, lying child who bluffed his way into being in charge of an aircraft carrier, and has no idea what to do now.

The crisis the world today faces puts in stark relief Trump's myriad shortcomings:

The president is in denial, and spends every day going on television performing a grotesque improvisational opera of empty promises, disinformation and blame, while agitating to reopen the country for the sake of the stock market.

Most of us have known for some time, of course, just how toxic, dysfunctional and disabled the United States has become as a consequence of their elevating Trump to the presidency. Unfortunately, there is no inoculation against their folly.

So yes, the United States holding up a shipment of masks at the U.S.-Canada border that was meant for Ontario — a shipment of three million, according to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, of which 500,000 were released as of Monday morning — was a big deal. But it was more than that, too.

Shortages in Ontario hospitals are entering a new stage. Ford claims the province is a week from exhausting its own stores of PPE. On Thursday of last week some hospitals in the GTA started asking employees to save N95 masks, and said they anticipated there would be a way to decontaminate and reuse them.

When you have a system where healthcare and equipment is available to the highest bidder, chaos is inevitable:

In a for-profit medical system, the top employers of ER doctors are groups owned by private-equity companies, including Canada’s Onex. ProPublica reported they are cutting doctor hours, because the demand for non-COVID-19 health care has collapsed, and the revenue isn’t there.

Red states and blue states are getting different amounts of PPE, but it sounds as chaotic as anything. After several shipments of PPE destined for the states were essentially hijacked by the federal government, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker had to go on a stealth mission to China with the owner of the New England Patriots under the guise of a humanitarian mission to secure 1.5 million masks.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported an Illinois official had to race to a McDonald’s rest stop outside Chicago with a $3.4 million (U.S.) cheque to beat out other bidders for N95s. California is putting together a consortium of states to bid collectively. If only there were another way to say “A Consortium of States.”

Every day, as the Covid crisis rolls on, I am deeply, deeply thankful to live in a country with leadership that, while not perfect, has not forgotten the people it serves.

Clearly, the same cannot be said about the rapidly declining, unwinding United States of America.

But What About The Cleaning Bill?

A new protection against Corvid-19 has been found! Rejoice, Brothers and Sisters.



And can I get a big AMEN?

Straight Talk From Italy

Perhaps more people would obey the mandate to self-isolate if more politicians spoke like this:

Opportunities Exist

During this time of crisis, it is easy to forget other, equally vital issues and the fact that the problems we currently confront do not exist in isolation. Climate change and the myriad emergencies it has spawned are not going away. Two letters in the print edition of the Toronto Star suggest that the opportunities presented by Covid-19 should not be ignored:

Fight for the climate, not oil companies

Toronto Star 4 Apr 2020

Many oil and gas companies are suffering because of COVID-19, losing workers and business as the price of oil plunges.

Giving them a bailout package would allow them to recover their losses and help minimize the damage they will incur due to the global pandemic. However, funnelling money into these companies would not be beneficial to our environment in the long run.

The oil and gas industry is responsible for releasing greenhouse gases into our atmosphere, which is a major contribution to climate change. Instead of bailing companies that do more harm than good to our health and environment, the federal government should focus on strengthening our climate action plan.

Canada needs to concentrate on reducing emissions, not helping them grow. The energy sector will improve eventually, but the same cannot be said for our ailing planet, if we continue to put it in the back seat when making financial decisions.

Canada has a choice, and I urge it to make the choice that will lead us to a healthier future.

Azhar Ali, Toronto

Let’s own our oil, or at least shares in Big Oil firms

Toronto Star 4 Apr 2020
I find it heartening that some members of the federal Liberal caucus have dared to question the agenda of Big Oil without being ostracized.

We are hearing about a possible big bailout of the oil industry. I urge the government to do what U.S. president Barack Obama should have done in the big financial meltdown, what Canada ought to have done in the auto industry bailout: Provide a bailout, but take an equity position and corresponding membership on the boards of directors in the industry.

Use the bailout funds to support workers in transition to sustainable jobs, while at the same time winding down the industry in the public interest. Reopen a few mothballed refineries and ensure that an ever-dwindling supply of oil is refined here and used here as we move to electric transportation powered by renewable energy.

The oil industry really ought to pay us for the unbelievable damage it has done to our environment while sucking out the resources.

We know government is ultimately going to pay for its short-sightedness in subsidizing (for years) an industry that was rendering our planet uninhabitable. We are all going to pay.

So let’s face the music now, when Canadians are showing tremendous resilience and willingness to pull together in the face of emergency.

Sue Craig, Toronto

Barbra Streisand's Searingly Accurate Assessment Of Trump

My friend Steve sent me this.

God Or Trump? You Decide

Your Sunday afternoon (rueful) smile.

God only brought one guy back from the dead on Easter. Trump is here to bring back the whole economy on Easter 2020. Enjoy this clip (possibly, like, the best ever), share and be sure to subscribe to Making Podcasts Great Again (@TrumpPod) - new every week! pic.twitter.com/aUifVWRzfh

— J-L Cauvin (@JLCauvin) March 24, 2020

Imagining A New World

Having the underpinnings of our daily lives so radically altered is immensely unsettling. The things we have always taken for granted, be it a daily walk, a quick trip to the store, a handshake with a friend, a rubbing of the eye, all of these and many more now come with the whiff of lethality. The new normal is egregiously abnormal.

We are all in mourning for the routines that until now gave structure to our lives.

But I also know I am but one among many who look for the good that can ultimately emerge from this crisis. The radical, unprecedented and immensely uncomfortable shift in living we are all experiencing has given us the opportunity to reflect on our lives, our values, and our ultimate fate as a society and as a species.

What might have been important to us such a short time ago now seems far less pressing: social status, getting and spending, ideologies that impel us to snipe at our political opponents - none have the urgency they might have held but a few short weeks ago. As Ben Jonson so aptly put it,

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Assuming we are spared the noose, what is it we want the world to look like when Covid-19 abates?

The Star's Rick Salutin offers his thoughts. Succinctly, he asks a fundamental question:

"Does the economy exist to serve people or vice versa?"

If you choose option 1, you pursue it, closing the economy till the plague passes, or settles into normal patterns, like the flu, which can be handled in normal ways (vaccine, built-up immunity) instead of people bringing out their dead as they did of old.

Another angle: Choose the economy, and — consequently — people die, they’re gone forever. Choose people, and the economy doesn’t die. It gets mothballed, put into a coma, to be revived. People die. Economies, which aren’t alive, can be put on hold, then come “roaring back.”

Because the economy isn’t a living being, you can tuck it away awhile.

In that case, the economy gets subordinated to human well-being. Rent, mortgages, debt are forgiven or delayed though money must still be found for repairs etc. Only governments can finance these dislocations. Private businesses can’t because they’re under constraints like competition.

Where will government find the money? .... Governments always find the money when there’s a war to fight.

I will return to the above question in a moment, but Salutin goes on to talk about this remarkable sight:

A remarkable thing about this debate, or nondebate since leaders have overwhelmingly opted for the people choice, is the range represented. Canadian right wing austerity buffs like Jason Kenney, François Legault and Doug Ford leapt in enthusiastically, alongside Justin Trudeau.

So much for the ideological divide. It is clear that Canadian leaders are opting for the people. But what about each of us and the innate power we have but too frequently fail to recognize? So we return to the writer's question about where government will find the money.

In the short-term, it will obviously borrow it.

Later, opportunists will no doubt try to foist austerity upon us as the price for today's spending. If we let them get away with that, we will have learned nothing from our current circumstances. No, if the world is to have a real rebirth, real, adult and difficult choices have to be made, including serious discussion around that always fraught topic, taxation.

Simply put, when this is over, many of us will have to pay more taxes. There will need to be special levees to reduce the deficit and the debt, because the old saw about growing the economy to pay for programs will not work for a long, long time, if ever again. Now, I am hardly the only one who enjoys a comfortable retirement, and the thought of paying more bothers me not in the least. As well, the corporate tax rate, when things stabilize, will have to be raised. And if there was ever a time for a financial transaction tax, it is now.

The weeks ahead will continue to be a crucible. We have already begun to reappraise our values as we recognize the things that connect us all. We cannot help but grow in appreciation of the people we rely on, be it the grocery clerk, the garbage collector, the pharmacist, the doctors, nurses, the tireless journalists bring us the best information they can. Equally, our empathy cannot help but increase for the more vulnerable among us: the precariously employed, those living from paycheck to paycheck, renters facing eviction, the homeless, those who rely on foodbanks. Platitudinous thoughts and prayers will not cut it. Programs like a basic income will. And we all must be willing to pay for them.

Fate has delivered to us an unprecedented opportunity to change the world's trajectory. But time is short. When Covid-19 abates, will we emerge healed from our petty obsessions and become participants in creating a new world? Or will vital lessons be quickly forgotten and see us return to our old modes of thinking, modes that are directly responsible for the sad state we are in today?

Now is not the time for us to be anything other than apt students.

A Glaring Omission

Anyone who may read this blog regularly knows that, for a number of reasons, I am not a fan of Justin Trudeau and his government. However, I give him top marks for his consistently calm and measured demeanour during this crisis. And the financial measures announced thus far, with some caveats, seem good.

He is, however, totally failing our mainstream media.

Due to declining ad revenues, media organizations have been struggling for years to survive. Now that we are in the grips of a pandemic, many face extinction. Thus far, the federal government has announced $30 million for a Covid-19 ad campaign that will do little to keep them alive:

Beyond the ad campaign, the lack of an emergency cash infusion for the struggling industry came as a disappointment to John Hinds, president and CEO of News Media Canada.

“We hoped he was going to announce something new. Instead, what (the government) did was rehash a couple of announcements that were very good with dealing with the crisis we were facing a year ago, but have nothing to do with the (pandemic-related cash crunch) crisis we’re facing today.”

When we need sources of responsible reporting now more than ever, they are drying up:

The state of print and digital news media made headlines this week when SaltWire Network said it was laying off nearly 40 per cent of its employees — about 240 people — and suspending all weekly newspapers in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador for 12 weeks.

In Quebec, 143 jobs were lost across a co-operative that owns daily newspapers outside of Montreal, including Le Soleil in Quebec City.

In an open letter to readers, SaltWire Network CEO Mark Lever said the business lost nearly two-thirds of its revenue because many advertisers ceasing operations temporarily.

“Like many industries and businesses, the economic ripple effect of COVID-19 has hit our local newspaper media industry faster and far more aggressively than we could have ever planned for or anticipated,” Lever wrote.

Those who think news is free and can be cherry-picked off the internet need to read this piece by The Star's Irene Gentle, who reminds us how, now more than ever, it is vital to stay informed.

The newspaper is doing its part in a number of categories, bringing readers the most vetted and most important news and views on an ongoing basis. And out of a sense of civic responsibility, it has removed its paywall on stories about Covid-19.

It is the right thing to do when the actions of every one of us impacts all of us.

Doing the right thing always feels good. But such are the times that doing the right thing now can harm our future viability. The media industry is in a deep financial crisis that has only worsened with the outbreak. Journalism can be staggeringly expensive, and responsible, exclusive, accountability journalism is the most expensive of all.

I add bold-type to this part of her message:

For those who can find it in their budgets amid these very difficult times, please consider subscribing to ensure public-service journalism that’s there for you can continue to exist. The need for local, responsible, compassionate, aggressive, in-depth reporting that demands accountability is clear in times like these. Subscription by some helps ensure vital information can be available to all.

Time for all of us, both as human beings and as citizens, to put on our thinking caps and keep them on, even after this crisis passes. But thinking caps need nourishment. I can think of no better a nutrient that responsible journalism.

Thank You, Corona Virus

A friend sent the following to me this morning. It is quite powerful, and reflects the kind of thinking I and I'm sure countless others have been engaged in of late.

May we truly take some lasting lessons from this ongoing catastrophe.

Time For A Massive Reorientation

It is perhaps to state the obvious that a crisis of the scale the world is currently experiencing is also an opportunity to reorient our perspective and our society. As many of us are now acutely aware, and despite the 'social distancing' we are observing, none of us live in isolation. Let us take this new understanding to heart.

Two letters in today's Star, I believe, effectively convey this.

For years, we have been encouraged to be isolated, as in caring only about ourselves, focusing only on our own well-being, which we are told is solely in our own hands.

We have been encouraged to think of ourselves as islands, our health, happiness and prosperity are independent of the larger community, society or country, never mind the world.

This way of thinking has naturally led to constant arguments against having efficient and caring governments, paying taxes, and public funding even for health and scientific research.

It is unfortunate that it takes something like COVID-19 to convince us, hopefully once and for all, that as human beings, we can never be independent of each other, and our health, well-being and prosperity is very much in each other’s hands.

COVID-19 once again shows the importance of our collective thinking and acting, of the importance of paying taxes and a fair tax system, of good governments, of public funding and of science and research.

It is not the corporations and the myth of trickle-down economics that can save us from common threats, but good governments, public health systems and collective support.

With individual and collective responsible spirit and actions, we can prevent the spread of the coronavirus and eventually defeat this pandemic.

Maria Sabaye Moghaddam, Ottawa

Twenty years from now, we will look back and say, “Thank goodness for this coronavirus!”

What we are witnessing is the beginning of a complete and far-reaching restructuring of life, business and communication.

COVID-19 has removed 80 per cent of the vehicles from the streets in a manner that no environmental activist could. It has removed 90 per cent of the people from buses, trains and subways.

What caught on as a convenience has now become the only way business can be conducted during this period of social distancing.

We are talking about working from home. It is safe to estimate that half the labour force can and is now working from home at some level and to some extent.

The big question is how entrenched will this practice become post-coronavirus.

This is as good at time as any to think carefully about what our priorities should be in the future.

COVID-19 gives us an opportunity to break away from business as usual. It gives us the ability to embrace of new paths; more sensible paths. A possible path that could see us reducing vehicular emissions so much that Greta Thunberg would be proud of us!

The curse of this coronavirus becomes a blessing for those who would use this opportunity to be courageous.

Greg McKnight, Brampton

A Big Fall

The Greeks were well-familiar with the concept of hamartia, which can be defined as follows:

The term hamartia derives from the Greek ἁμαρτία, from ἁμαρτάνειν hamartánein, which means "to miss the mark" or "to err".[1][2] It is most often associated with Greek tragedy....

In literature, it is usually associated with the protagonist's tragic flaw, which often manifests itself as hubris, a kind of exaggerated pride or arrogance, and it never ends well.

Unfortunately, hubris is not a mere literary construct. Its presence is increasingly evident in the world today, and it is fueled by a massive error in our character, our collective tragic flaw: the belief that we are somehow above, not part of, nature.

The result, if you will forgive a cliché, is that the chickens are now coming home to roost.

... a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise – with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections between the wellbeing of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems.

Our aggressive, heedless thirst for greater and greater economic gain has resulted in widespread habitat destruction, with dire results:

“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbour so many species of animals and plants – and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”

While we have always had a certain number of viruses that originate in animals and infect us, such as rabies and plague, up to now, with modern medicine and detection, the threat has been manageable.

Not anymore.

Research suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Sars, bird flu and now Covid-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originate in animals.

Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at UCL, says the emergence and spread of these bugs

... are linked to environmental change and human behaviour. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, she says.

The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, is now “a hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so many more of us, in every environment. We are going into largely undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily, and then we are surprised that we have new ones.”

Disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, says that things will get much worse:

Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. “Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”

Human activity is at the root of this multi-faceted problem. Habitat destruction and the world population explosion leads to other sources of infection, not the least of which are markets that have opened up to feed an increasingly hungry world:

Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot.

The “wet market” (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, thought by the Chinese government to be the starting point of the current Covid-19 pandemic, was known to sell numerous wild animals, including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles.

Equally, urban markets in west and central Africa sell monkeys, bats, rats, and dozens of species of bird, mammal, insect and rodent slaughtered and sold close to open refuse dumps and with no drainage.

“Wet markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens,” says Gillespie. “Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market, you can have a spillover event.”

The acute crisis the world now faces is clearly one with many origins. No amount of hand-wringing will alter that fact, nor will self-pity change the trajectory of Corvid-19.

And no one likes having a finger pointed at them, particularly during a global crisis, but that is precisely what Mother Nature is doing.

We ignore Her at our ongoing peril.

You Really Don't Need Me To Offer Any Comment Here, Do You?

The Reverend Kenneth Copeland is up to his usual mischief:

Multi-millionaire televangelist Kenneth Copeland tells viewers that even if they lose their jobs because of the coronavirus outbreak, they must continue giving to the church: "Whatever you do right now, don't you stop tithing!" pic.twitter.com/Xp154Fm1rn

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 19, 2020

About That Other Crisis

As we remain fixated on the immediate, acute crisis that has engulfed the world, it is easy to lose sight of the other crisis that continues to engulf the world:

Last year’s summer was so warm that it helped trigger the loss of 600bn tons of ice from Greenland – enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2mm in just two months, new research has found.

Unlike the retreat of sea ice, the loss of land-based glaciers directly causes the seas to rise, imperiling coastal cities and towns around the world. Scientists have calculated that Greenland’s enormous ice sheet lost an average of 268bn tons of ice between 2002 and 2019 – less than half of what was shed last summer. By contrast, Los Angeles county, which has more than 10 million residents, consumes 1bn tons of water a year.

Glaciers are melting away around the world due to global heating caused by the human-induced climate crisis. Ice is reflective of sunlight so as it retreats the dark surfaces underneath absorb yet more heat, causing a further acceleration in melting.

Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, scientists revealed last year, pushing up previous estimates of global sea level rise and putting 400 million people at risk of flooding every year by the end of the century.

Isabella Velicogna, a professor of Earth system science, has more bad news for us:

More recent research has found that Antarctica, the largest ice sheet on Earth, is also losing mass at a galloping rate, although the latest University of California and Nasa works reveals a nuanced picture.

“In Antarctica, the mass loss in the west proceeds unabated, which is very bad news for sea level rise,” Velicogna said.

The research has further illustrated the existential dangers posed by runaway global heating, even as the world’s attention is gripped by the coronavirus crisis. Crucial climate talks are set to be held later this year in Glasgow, although the wave of cancellations triggered by the virus has threatened to undermine this diplomatic effort.

Yes, we are right to be very alarmed by our current pandemic; however, we must bear in mind that the other one is going to ultimately cost countless more lives, and act accordingly.

From The Ministry Of Truth

Pay no attention to the left side of your screens. Goldstein has been very busy.

This video on Fox News messaging around the coronavirus is really something. They are truly a propaganda outlet for Trump - nothing more - their messaging changed exactly when his did. pic.twitter.com/vSNJSpNqGY

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) March 18, 2020

Some Gallows Humour

For technical reasons related to the site, I can't put up the cartoon here, but if you click on this link, you will see something from the Far Side's Gary Larson that is both funny and relevant in a macabre kind of way.