On Canada Day

On this day it is often difficult for us not to feel smug when we look at so much of the world beyond our borders. While such complacence is never a good idea, in her column today Susan Delacourt reminds us we have much to be thankful for, especially vis-à-vis the United States:

Happy Canada Day in the age of COVID-19 — the border between this country and the United States has never been this sharply defined, literally and politically. As many states in America are tumbling back into a resurgence of the virus, Canada and its health-care system are slowly emerging from the crisis in much better shape than our neighbour to the south.

The increasingly dire situation in Donald Trump's Amerika has prompted a turnabout in the thinking of Wendal Potter,

who used to work with the Cigna health-insurance firm, [and now says] he [is] sorry for all the lies he used to tell about Canada’s health-care system and pointed to the COVID-19 response in our two countries as proof of which one was better.

Potter’s Twitter thread confessed that big money was spent in his business “to push the idea that Canada’s single-payer system was awful & the U.S. system much better.” Now, however, he said it’s clear “it was a lie & the nations’ COVID responses prove it.”

Potter has now posted a video as well, called One Pandemic, Two Countries, which plainly states: “When it comes to keeping people safe from COVID, Canada has the United States beat by a long shot.”

Here is that video, and Happy Canada Day, everyone:

Finally, for those interested in this gap between America and Canada on healthcare, I tried to spell it out a bit more in this video. Thank you for spreading this message. We need to break the U.S. free from the greed of the insurance industry. pic.twitter.com/pcSkyMj8ee

— Wendell Potter (@wendellpotter) June 26, 2020

The Ugly American

Probably first coined in a 1958 novel, The Ugly American is a term that, unfortunately, has clear and immediate relevance:

The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world.

Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.

“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.

That this rapacious and selfish ethos should come to the fore now is really not surprising. While doubtlessly quite happy to exploit an ethnocentric orientation that seems to define so many Americans, the Infant-in-Chief is reacting in a typically craven manner to some unpleasant truths that may cost him his re-election:

The deal was announced as it became clear that the pandemic in the US is spiralling out of control. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading public health expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate the US was sliding backwards.

“We are going in the wrong direction,” said Fauci. Last week the US saw a new daily record of 40,000 new coronavirus cases in one day. “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around,” he said. He could not provide an estimated death toll, but said: “It is going to be very disturbing, I guarantee you that.”

Even though he has proven by his abysmally inept handling of the pandemic to be quite willing to sacrifice his fellow Americans, I doubt that Donald Trump, even in his most delusional state, believes that kind of statistic will serve him well during his campaign.

Hence, a reappearance of The Ugly American in full selfish splendour who, if Trump's disciples remain true to form, will be lustily cheered.

Not a sentiment, I suspect, that will be shared by those with a conscience and a recognition of their obligation to the larger world, i.e., real human beings.

To John Wayne Fans Everywhere

Apparently, the screen hero had the proverbial feet of clay. There is no context that can justify these indefensible views, expressed in a 1971 Playboy interview:







H/t Brian Karem

UPDATED: With Age Comes Wisdom

But clearly, only for some:



UPDATE: Trump tweeted out the above video, despite the 'white power" proclamation at its beginning. He later withdrew it, claiming he hadn't heard the offending phrase.

Hmm, about as believable as his Sgt. Shultz-like assertion that he 'knew nothing' about Russia offering the Taliban a bounty on the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, eh?

UPDATED:Theirs Is Not To Reason

Owen's blog post today discusses how the world sees the United States as a nation to be shunned, one of the reasons being its entirely inept handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Clearly, its refusal to confront this peril in a responsible, mature manner means that its citizens have become a deadly threat to other countries. My hope is that our country keeps our border closed to them indefinitely.

Last night, NBC Nightly News devoted the first six minutes to the surge of cases in various states. To say the least, the situation is dire. That was followed, as you will see at the 5:50 mark below, by a report on how the wearing of masks, an effective method of reducing transmission of the virus, is still a highly contentious, highly politicized matter in the Benighted States of America.



UPDATE: If this unmasked woman were infected, I wonder how far her viral droplets would travel, given her highly agitated state:

It’s funny how some people assume people that wear a mask *must* be on the left.

Because only the left doesn’t want to spread disease? 🤷‍♂️

pic.twitter.com/LQZ0dv2tsC

— Stephen Punwasi (@StephenPunwasi) June 27, 2020

An Alternate Reality

With a pathological liar as its president, it probably does not come as a shock that many Americans live in an alternate reality. Promoted and cultivated endlessly by Donald Trump, their master, and spread wide by pernicious social media and house organs like Fox 'News' and One American News Network, it is a version of things that until recently would have been deemed credible only to the uneducated, cognitively challenged, or the completely unhinged. Sadly, many more appear to be regularly drinking from these poisoned waters.

Bruce Anderson writes:

Knowledge of the world seems to be deteriorating in America, abetted by a president—ignorant of the world himself—whose formula for political success depends on more people becoming less informed.

Despite all that has been responsibly reported about Russian interference, Trumpian malfeasance and his daily record of gross incompetence, a recent Abacus poll yielded some disheartening results:

If Trump loses, most Republican voters say they will believe the election was rigged. If he tries to stay in office after losing, they wouldn’t want the military to enforce the election results. In other words, their trust in or need for him is so powerful they don’t stop to think what sort of precedent it would set to leave the country in a state of impasse.

As many Americans think Russia is America’s best friend as think France, Italy or Germany is. This despite America having spent decades in a military alliance with France, Italy and Germany to protect against Russian military ambition, despite proven Russian use of cyberwarfare to disrupt American social peace and elections.

It would appear that those polled have little insight into their country's relations with the rest of the world:

Under Trump’s time in office, Republicans are four times more likely to say relations with Canada have improved (41 per cent), than think they have worsened (8 per cent). This is mindless partisanship—the facts of the last few years were almost constant tension around NAFTA, dairy subsidies, steel and aluminum tariffs, the idea of Canada as a security risk, the G7 Charlevoix summit friction. But for Republican voters everything seems to be going swimmingly.

Less than 12 per cent of Republican voters think U.S. relations have soured with Great Britain, France or Germany. This despite almost constant friction in these relationships, on topics from trade to NATO to climate change to refugee and immigration policy. Trump has by all accounts a terrible relationship with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. He was on bad terms with U.K. Conservative Prime Minister Teresa May and launched scathing attacks on London’s Mayor.

In a time when the world sees the U.S. for what it has become, 80 per cent of Republicans think Trump has made America greater.

Canada has good reason to worry about living next door to an unhinged giant:

Half of Republican voters would go along with abandoning NORAD, roughly a third would support building a wall and putting troops along the Canadian border. Happily, most Americans are against invading Canada to get at our resources. But stop and think about the fact that only 56 per cent of Americans strongly oppose the idea.

As children, almost all of us indulged in fantasies of one kind or another. It now appears that many Americans have entered a second, much darker childhood.

Let us not be in any hurry to reopen our borders to such a diseased nation.

Just In Case The Blood Of The Lamb Doesn't Protect You

... these pastors have a backup plan:

Dream City Church, the north Phoenix megachurch set to host a Donald Trump rally on June 23, claims it has solved the pandemic problem in its auditorium, making it safe for anyone who wants to attend.

In a video posted on Sunday, Senior Pastor Luke Barnett and Chief Operations Officer Brendon Zastrow announce happily that the church has installed a new air-purification system that kills 99.9 percent of the coronavirus. The technology, they say, was developed by members of the church.

A megachurch is hosting Trump's rally on Tuesday in Phoenix. These two con-men falsely claim they've installed a system which kills 99.9% of COVID-19.

Arizona's Coronavirus numbers are surging. Madness...pic.twitter.com/6mgM8BLhO9

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) June 22, 2020

Despite their evangelical fervour for this technology, caution is clearly warranted. Consider first what the fine print of Clean Air EXP, the company behind this marvel, says:

"COVID-19 REPORT: Lab tests confirm that CleanAir EXP eliminates 99.9% of coronavirus from the air in less than 10 minutes.*"

The footnote states, "* Biosafety lab analysis performed on active coronavirus 229E test surrogate."

Coronavirus 229E is one of the viruses responsible for the common cold that's often used in virus studies.

But even if the technology can eliminate the surrogate virus in 10 minutes, such studies are done in controlled laboratory settings. They don’t necessarily apply to something like the interior of a megachurch. How much air a system can process in a set time would play a role. Clean Air EXP's website states that its home system takes a few hours to purify the air: "Most homes see a 90% reduction of particulates and contaminants within 4 hours, and 99.8% reduction in 6 hours or less."

A larger, commercial system can purify more air than a home unit, presumably. But it's hard to see how 99 percent of COVID-19 could be eliminated from the church auditorium before people arrive. Also, saying attendees would be "safe and protected" when they come to the rally overstates the ability of any air-purifying system to prevent transmission by infected people in a crowd.

Faith, it has been said, can move mountains. As of this writing, it remains to be seen if faith in an unproven technology can conquer Covid-19.