Keep Calm and Carry On Reading
From
articles inspired by The Sunday Time
(of
which I have been an avid reader for more than forty years.)
A
Shipment of 20 tons of medical equipment arrived in Italy from
China. On Tuesday the EU shut their external borders to most
non-residents. (so
much for free movement)
Meanwhile,
the French can still go to the boulangerie for their morning bread -
handed over a barricaded counter
(shades
of the Paris Commune)
-
you can also walk to the tabac, wine shop or street market.
Anyone leaving home must carry an attestation, an official form on
which they must select from one of a small number of reasons to
justify their presence on the street, or risk a £125 fine. One
of the worst hit areas is Mulhouse, an eastern city where a gathering
of tens of thousands of evangelical Christians in February is blamed
for a large cluster of cases.
(divine
retribution?)
The
French government has pumped several hundred millions of euros into
supporting both individuals and companies. The tourist industry
is in tatters.
The
drive-in cinema is making a comeback in America, as one of the only
public spectacles allowing viewers isolation. A priest in
Maryland is offering a drive-through confessional service in a car
park following the suspension of masses.
More
than 150 people in Jordan have been arrested for breaking a
coronavirus curfew. In Iraq people have ignored government
warnings and ventured out, many on pilgrimages to holy sites.
(good
to know that Muslims are as silly as anyone else)
Coronavirus
by Country
Italy
53
578
China
81
008
Iran
20
610
France
14
459
America
24 142
UK
5018
South
Korea
8799
(any
figures for North Korea? Guess not)
Germany
22
213
Switzerland
6655
Belgium
2815
Indonesia
450
Japan
1046
(the
Olympic have finally been postponed for a year)
Sweden
1764
Philippines
307
Canada
1
205
Aus
1
072
NZ
52
In
a reversal of fortunes, westerners in Asia now face the stigma of the
coronavirus,finding themselves regarded as potential carriers of
Covid-19 because of surging infection rates in their home countries.
Pandemic
blame game widens rift between Trump and furious China. Anti - US
conspiracy theories in response to the president's Wuhan flu jibes
look set to push relations back still further. Apparently there is
increasing talk in US circles of decoupling from China. Beijing state
media is pushing the line that the virus source was the United
States. To the unconcealed fury of Beijing Trump and his allies have
repeatedly referred to the disease as the Chinese virus or Wuhan flu.
Chinese officials theorise that US soldiers competing in a sports
competition last year brought the virus to Wuhan. On Friday the
Chinese media circulated the idea that the US withdrew from the 2001
bio-weapon treaty to develop the virus. Meanwhile Tom Cotton, the
Republican senator theorises that China came from an accidental leak
from a Wuhan lab.
(rats
fighting each other in a sack?)
As the virus surged in Europe and the US, China is reporting no new
cases.
Boris’
dad, Stanley Johnson, has decided to become a French citizen because
his mother Irene was born in France. Stanley was the Tory MP
for Wight and Hampshire East from 1979-84 and worked for the European
Commission, so his children spent part of their childhood in
Brussels.
Jokes
Did
you hear the one about John Travolta testing negative for the virus?
Turns out it was only Saturday Night Fever.
What
do you call an Instagram celebrity with Covid-19? An
Influenzer.
So
many coronavirus jokes out there, it’s a pundemic.
My
therapist: your OCD is irrational. : My government: you must
wash your hands 19 times a day.
In
an unsettling reversal of my teenage years, I am now yelling at my
parents for going out.
Day
two without sports. Found a young lady sitting on my settee.
Apparently she’s my wife. She seems nice.
I
never thought I’d say this, but can we go back to talking about
Brexit.
The
prime minister suggesting people should not go to the pub is like
Trump suggesting people should avoid shooting others in the street.
I
managed to get one loo roll from Tesco. I feel bad for the next
person to use their customer toilet.
Matthew
Dyed says in his article: We
crave order in the heart of the storm. No wonder tall tales and
populists are seductive
-
an email popped into his box explaining that the Chinese developed
the virus to incite global recession - shortly thereafter it was
asserted that Bill Gates had developed it as a population control
measure. In response, scientists wrote in the Lancet that the
virus emerged from wildlife without any human intervention.
Conspiracy theorists instantly claimed that they were in on it. He
goes on: When we feel uncertain, when randomness intrudes upon our
lives, we respond by reintroducing order in some other way.
Superstitions and conspiracy theories speak to this need.
Fortunately, hard core conspiracy theorists may behave as though
their delusions are true, but most people merely pay lip service to
them, giving them a nod on a busy day, not unlike an atheist
whispering a silent prayer during a bout of airplane turbulence.
Many
people suddenly become scientists, or at least experts in a field
they have little or no training in or aptitude for.
In
times of uncertainty, people are more likely to put their faith in
demagogues, such as the autocrats who came to power in Germany and
Italy after the chaos of the First World War. People cling to
the idea of “temporary kings” who can claim overlordship if
natural phenomena like the wind, the rain or even the virus. Perhaps
the case of Donald Trump may illustrate. As the crisis hit, he
reached for the playbook of compensatory control, dismissing the
virus as overblown and exaggerating his power to defeat it. “We
closed it down, we stopped it.” He also blamed the Chinese, which
undermined the global action. His critics will hope these
mistakes make as strong an impression on American voters as the
dismantling of the National Security Council unit that focussed on
pandemic preparedness.
This,
of course, may be the reason he has done what he has. He is a
prisoner of the times, and he can’t escape. Faced with an election
in November he must either sink or swim. So, he can take charge
and hope it works or just muddle on hoping it may not be as bad as
some scientists believe.
Take
Herbert Hoover as an example. In the early stages of WW One, he
gained great acclimation for his work in bringing humanitarian relief
to Belgium. Herbert Hoover created the Commission for Relief in
Belgium (CRB) to help the victims of famine. At the time of the CRB's
foundation, the United States had not yet entered the war, and Hoover
was viewed as a neutral negotiator. As a result, he was personally
able to deal with the English, French, and German governments, so
that the CRB could bring aid to the famished citizens.
Food
relief was essential because 10 million Belgians and French were
dependent on it during the four years of German occupation. The first
ship to deliver goods to the Belgians carried 1,018 tons of wheat,
rice, beans, and peas. Close to 2,500 other ships took 5 million tons
of food to the innocent civilians. By working together, Hoover and
prominent Belgian officials ensured that the acquired food was given
directly to the citizens of the starving areas.
Through
these extensive undertakings, 3 billion dollars were spent delivering
11 million metric tons of supplies to the countries in need. The
United States funded most of the money, though some others, like
Britain, did help out a bit. Belgium and France tried to cover the
cost of the food relief efforts by taking out loans. However, during
the Great Depression, the loans were deserted.
Even
after the United States entered the war in 1917, Hoover still helped
combat hunger. As the appointed head of the United States Food
Administration (USFA), he encouraged the Americans to conserve food.
Through these efforts, there would be enough to send to Europeans in
need. Once the war ended, he continued to help arrange relief as head
of the American Relief Administration for all of the European
countries, as well as defeated Germany and the other Central Powers.
In this capacity, Hoover enabled 6 million tons of food to be sent to
just about every European country.
Herbert
Hoover is, thus, credited with saving close to 10 million lives in
this region —about 2 million in northern France, and approximately
7 million Belgians.
Of
course, he gets no credit for this when the Great Depression took
hold and, indeed, is held responsible for much of it by the American
people living in shanty towns (Hoovervilles). He took the view
that it was not the government’s job to get involved, And we got
FDR as a direct response and consequence. This is the spectre that
haunts Trump.
Only
time will tell who is correct!
Quotes
of the Week
We
are taking away the ancient, inalienable right of the free-born
people of the UK to go to the pub.
Boris
Johnson
I
encourage you all to keep smiling through.
-
Dame Vera Lynn quotes from her famous war-time song We’ll Meet Again
It’s
not often you’ll find me talking about the great indoors - but this
is the exception.
Bear
Grylls - Chief Scout
Do
remember, they can’t cancel the Spring.
David
Hockney, releasing a picture of some daffodils
Jeremy
Clarkson
Jeremy
Clarkson is an acquired taste, but he’s witty and usually a good
laugh. His piece, “My Old age is cancelled, and society’s
about to collapse and the greens just can’t stop smiling”
A
Selection: so the canals of Venice are no longer the colour of a
Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. They are gin-clear. This is great
news for the hard-core greens who will read this and say to
themselves Ooh, that’s lovely. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if
the water stayed that way forever! In the sky there are no aluminium
tubes filled with Fatties from Newcastle heading for the chlamydia
hotspots in Spain. Of course, we could try explaining to our
idiotic green friends that thousands of people have actually died.
Don’t forget the spiritual leader, David Attenborough, said “our
population growth had to come to an end. That’s something the
greens would, presumably, welcome - especially if it's just a cull or
the old ad the sick. They rejoice at the stock market debacle after
all, say Friend of the Earth, in this time of trouble, poverty,
disease and economic despair it will bring out the best in people.
Hang on, in a few weeks when they’ve eaten the last of their tinned
spaghetti hoops and the supermarket shelves are bare and they have no
money and the banks are shut and the cash machines are empty and the
wi-fi is down and the kids are screaming, you wait and see where the
milk of human kindness goes then.
That’s
why, says Jeremy, when you were stocking up on bog rolls. I was out
buying four tons of vegetable sets and, just in case I’m right and
Friends of the Earth are wrong, 600 shotgun cartridges. (Jeremy
notes that he needs them to shoot deer, not people - wow! he dodged a
bullet on that one literally and figuratively )
It
could be that in a month we will stop going for long walks and
playing on-line Scrabble people will stop paying their taxes.
And then when they run short they will steal. Even the vicar, when
hungry, will kill the lady who embroiders the church kneelers for a
custard cream. (
I have spent about a week reading or re-reading all the
end-of-the-world stories I can remember - most of course concern
nuclear wars but the scenario is essentially the same - breakdown of
society and the rule of law.) Sure
the socialist/green movement will see Elton John putting out his own
bins and Alan Sugar cycling to the tip and they will say it’s
become fairer now the young are poor and the old are dead.
But
it fills me with such sadness, says Clarkson. I’m about to
turn 60. I was building a house, and I was looking forward to sitting
in a rocking chair on the porch, with a glass of wine, listening to
the far off murmur of civilization and the whispery giggle of my
grandchildren playing hide-and-seek in the long grass. Instead,
I’m facing the possibility of my house never being finished and not
seeing the countries I haven’t yet visited and losing friends to
the effing virus whilst having to do back-breaking work that I then
barter for clothes pegs from the local whittler. The worst thing is
that I’ll have to live my remaining days with dirty fingernails and
warts listening to an endless stream of smug green people gloating
about how happy they are. And boiling wood to make hoes is
exactly what they have always wanted to do. I don’t want to live in
that world. Sorry to be so morose, I’m not usually an unhappy
person, but I have nothing to smile about. The world as we knew it is
ending and I wasn’t ready for that.
Snippets
A
doctor reported that two patients arrived at a London A&E
for advice on coronavirus: one feared he may have become infected
after a long telephone conversation with someone in China and the
other wondered if he could have picked up the virus from a Chinese
take-away.
The
headline of the year's contest is over: The Spectator ran a
profile of Sir Patrick Valllance, the government’s chief scientific
officer and professor Chris Whitty, the Chief medical officer under
the heading The Two Gentlemen of Corona.
When
Chris Heaton-Harris was a backbencher he tweeted, I’ve a mate who
thinks the cradle of civilisation was in Zagreb. he‘s a
Croationist.
Niall
Ferguson - fellow at the Hoover Institution Stanford
The
word genocide is well known, Less well known is the word
“senicide” meaning the deliberate murder of the elderly.
Senicide is such a rare word that Microsoft’s Word underlines it in
red. Itching to auto-correct it to suicide. All that is about
to change.
I
suggest you track down: "The Law of Life" it's a
short story by the American naturalist writer Jack London. It was
first published in McClure's Magazine, Vol.16, March, 1901. In 1902,
it was published in a collection of Jack London's stories, The
Children of Frost, by Macmillan Publishers. - should be out of
copyright and therefore freely available on the ubiquitous internet.
The
statistics are unequivocal. If, as it seems increasingly likely
that a significant number of western countries are going to mismanage
the pandemic then a very large number of old people are going to die
before their time. In China the case fatality rate for those
under 50 was 0.2%. For those over 60 it was 3.6%, for the over 70’s
8% and for the over 80’s it shoots to 14.8% In Italy the rates are
even higher for the various age groups. In one respect it is a
blessing that Covid seems to be ageist. In the US for instance the
flu epidemic of 1958 killed the Under 5’s at a greater rate than it
killed the over 64’s.
When
the present epidemic has run its course and we have lost more
Britons, Italians and Americans than Chinese it will be because
the Asian countries drew the right conclusions from the Sars epidemic
of 2003. Most western countries did not draw the same
conclusions from their relatively easy exposure in 2009. I wrote
about this in this column on Jan 26. Nothing was done.
It
was not just Donald Trump’s irresponsible nonchalance that did the
damage. There were failures of the very organisations charged
with protecting us. In American there has been a scandalous
insufficiency of testing klts. Belarus and Russia have more
kits. The UK policy of herd immunity at the early stages was clearly
wrong. Because of these blunders, America and the UK have moved too
slowly to adopt the mass testing in East Asia.
How
many may die? We do not know. In America, if the Italian
experience is repeated in New York and California we could see
between a half and a million deaths. I’ve seen worst case
figures of 1.7 to 2.2 million. In the UK it could be 510 00 deaths.
The
19th Century Russian historian, Nickoli Karamzin defined senocide as
the right of children to murder parents overburdened by pld age and
ilness, and useless to their fellow citizens. Explorers
reported that the practice was still being practised by the Netsilil
of King William Island as recently as the 1930’s. (have
a look at the fate of the Franklin Expedition to this area of Canada
in the 1840’s which is well-documented)
Senicde
will not be tolerated in modern, developed democracies. Those
whose sins of omission will be harshly judged by the voters, history
and quite possibly the judges,
Rod
Liddle
I
always read Ron Liddle's column. OK, he's a fascist, but he is a
humorous fascist and a keen observer of what's on the mind of the
public. His offering: My daughter's going to get an education after
six months in isolation with me, is done well.
I
particularly like his interjection - we may enjoy an afternoon
revelling in Falangist art as we listen to Ride of the Valkyries. We
must assume he's joking or his daughter might kill him. Ron decides
to go to a farmer's market instead of the supermarket,hoping that if
he contracts the virus it will be an expensive middle class - a kind
of organic, fair-trade Covid 19. How reactionary can you get? He
needs fags. (Ron is an arch - smoker and believes firmly it's none of
the government's business if you want to smoke.) He is quite happy to
stand next to 100 sweating wheezing doomed creatures who have just
returned from a package tour of Wuhan, Tehran and Milan.
He
returns home with his stash of Superkings and washes his hands.
Problem. Since he has washed his hands how does he turn the tap off?
Eventually he decides to use the towel which he used to dry his hands
on to turn off the water. Great. But what to do with the towel. He
muses - officialdom seems to forget that the public are morons. He
proposes that the morons should get priority allocations of
ventilators and stuff. It's not their fault that they were born with
the perceptiveness and ingenuity of krill. On Friday, Ron's wife did
the last school run and they are now tasked with the company of a
truculent teenager for six months. A hell beyond imagining. His wife
had first go. She informed the daughter that at 9 on Monday she would
expect her to vacuum the house. The daughter looked mystified. The
daughter explained that she thought that that woman who comes round
did the vacuuming and brought her own machine. Mum moves on to the
dishwasher. Ron fears that they will soon have to buy a new one.
So
he devises a-plan to re-educate his daughter, who he fears has been
so inculcated by the left-wing school system that it is now critical
that she learn some facts. His Monday module is entitled
How
the British Empire Brought Decency, Democracy and Proper Drains to
the Grateful People of the World.
(he
glosses over how the loss of the Empire was mostly owing to
incompetence, cruelty and mal-administration) In Tuesday's chemistry
lesson he teaches her to set fire to a photo of Greta Thurnberg using
a small cube of sodium and a bowl of water. The Geography
lesson will focus on how poverty in Africa is solely the result of
colonisation, with special reference to Ethiopia and Liberia - never
colonised (
he
seems to have forgotten the Italian invasion in the prelude to WW2 )
contrasting this with Singapore and Malaysia - colonised for 140
years. In literature she will study nothing written since 1912
(except Aye Rand) and concentrate on works by Thomas Carlyle and
Edmund Burke. Sex education will consist of horrific photos
depicting the sex act, chidbirth, single parenthood plus lengthy
readings from the Book of Revelations (Deuteronomy
might be better) and
reciting mantra-like the word NO, NO.
In
case you think he’s joking, he muses that the alternative is to
watch his daughter endlessly swiping back and forth on her bloody
phone, earplugs in as sentience drains from her brain through the
tiny hole therein.
He
concludes: for the most part the responses to the viruses and
the injunctions imposed have been patient, civilized, understanding
and sometimes noble. But with shopping trollies piled even
higher with loo roll and folks clinging to the soft-ply tissue as if
it were the last cherished remnant of an easier life, he’s not sure
it’s all worth it. Perhaps the kids are better off immersed in
their virtual world, listening to Korean pop music and suddenly
becoming precariously mortal.
Tom
Holland
Reminding
readers that Boris is essentially a classist, Tom charts how the
demise of many classical civilizations was the result, at least in
part, of disease and pestilence. Boris’ Pericles was done in
by a plague that wiped out a third of the population of Athens and
Pericles himself.
In
the ancient empires prospects of a long life were poor. Cities
like Rome and Alexandria teemed with “immigrants” from the
intersection of two of the most toxic cradles for pathogens - central
Africa and central Asia. In the mid-third century a plague much
like ebola cut a great scythe through the empire. Bowels melted into
a soggy mess, blood oozed from the eyes and feet rotted away.
(wow,
you think we’ve got it bad) The
result was - the Roman World collapsed into anarchy.
By
the sixth century when Yersinia pestis - the plague pathogen,
originally from China (Trump
would be pleased)
Rome
had moved to Constantinople. The pile of corpses were piled so
high that the Emperor was obliged to dump them in the sea. Vast pits
were dug outside the city walls and new bodies were laid and trodden
upon by feet and trampled like spoiled grapes (it’s
useful to remember, that your distant ancestors were living through
this as if they were not you are not here alive today)
Fortunately,
we are equipped to fight epidemics in a way the ancients would find
incomprehensible. Our civilization is not melting away like a
sand castle, Covid 19 will pass, and most of us will pull through
And yet, occasionally, at the back of the PM’s mind does the
spectre of the surest mirror held up to our future appear?
And
from a Week of the Eastern Daily Press - local paper in
Norfolk
The
Burston Crown - a 438 year old pub in south Norfolk is offering home
deliveries of supplies and meals to locals.
Tenerife
police drag councilor from pool amid lockdown - maybe my favourite of
the week this local dignitary, on vacation in Tenerife decided screw
the lockdown, I’m going swimming in the hotel pool. Nor for
long, a copper jumped in, dragged her out and threw her in jail
Were
in limbo - house buyers speak out about uncertainty -
self
explanatory
From
the letters to the Editor - we are reaping the result of the Margaret
Thatcher years of loads of money an screw everyone else
It
will cost £36 million to bring Norfolk roads up to the standard they
were in 2007
Southern
England could be in drought in 20 years without cuts in water use -
should
we start worrying?
Pathetic
behaviour, milk bottles reported being stolen front door steps
From
John Bailey - fishing correspondent: Fishing
for a lockdown strategy, or what next?
Prince
Charles test positive as Duke and Duchess of Cambridge return to
their Norfolk home
Wetherspoons
boycott is the least Tim Martin deserves
Meditation
in a crisis
-
advice from Norwich Buddist Centre
West
End smash hit the Book of Mormon is coming to Norwich - dates and
time tbc - and
Joseph Smith is twirling in his grave.
Parents
will need to show patience with their children - editorial
Coronavirus
prompts brewery to launch “drive through” for beer -
about
time to
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