In any subject or discussion there are the religious nutcases - people who believe
either they will be protected from infection, or that the pandemic is divine intervention,
or that the solution for the world lies within their specific ideology. There is also an
ample supply of idiot or despotic politicians. As a government energy scientist, I can still remember explaining to a group
of MPs about 40 years ago why the overall efficiency of a typical coal fired power station
was only about 35%. One of them suggested they needed to look into repealing the second
law of thermodynamics.
In the USA, the influence of the 'evangelical right' has now become so
extreme that
worship of Satan has been proposed an an antidote!
Coinciding with the start of
the Covid-19 pandemic, Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro urged women to have six children "for the good of the
country". He was appearing at a televised event promoting a national women's
healthcare plan!
At about the same time, he was also indicted
by the USA in connection with money laundering and drugs supply (narco-terrorism) -
and with a $15 million reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction. All
part of the power-play of world politics!Most problems in the world - medical and environmental have their origins at
least in part in religion and its worship of surplus human breeding - so this further
contribution by Nicolás
Maduro was most welcome.
The best riposte to religion is perhaps humour, but in countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran
you'd get 5000 lashes, and maybe 20 years of hard labour followed by a grisly death for this series of sketches by Rowan
Atkinson (aka Mr Bean).
Yet there are many examples of religious people who do good in their local communities. This is one poignant example from
Italy, at the height of their coronavirus crisis towards the end of March 2020.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic
there can perhaps be no finer example in the UK of 'good works' being done by an already
well established Christian charity - His Church based in
Lincolnshire |
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In mid March 2020 the attorney
general of Texas issued a legal opinion deeming gun stores "essential services"
during the pandemic.
It was earlier reported that firearm
shops across the US saw soaring sales thanks to Covid-19
Gun sales and ownership in the USA is strongly linked to the fundamentalist or evangelical
Christian beliefs of millions of many middle class and 'Hill-Billy' gun-toting types
of Americans - as indeed is the anti-abortion movement.
These people believe not only that they have a God-given right to their affluent and
environmentally destructive lifestyles, and including killing as many animals as possible
for sport, they also worship surplus human breeding - as if the world didn't have more
than enough people already.
There were many subsequent
reports of soaring gun sales.
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There
were many protests against 'lock-down' in American states especially in the southern
'Bible Belt'. Protesters are often confronted by medical staff. Protesters were generally
of the bible bashing, gun-toting, working class type
Protests were held streets
of Michigan - at least the the UK Police didn't have to deal with this collection of
overfed, gun toting morons. |
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Religious nutcases come in many forms in the
USA - Mike DeWine the Ohio State
Governor has 8 children. A long time Republican, he recently signed into law a piece of
legislation that would have criminalised doctors for not performing what is an impossible
medical procedure - re-implantation of a foetus after a medically necessary abortion!
Maybe the USA deserves to experience a dose of reality with upwards of 200,000 deaths from
Covid-19. Those who do die may largely be victims of an inadequate health care system.
In this photograph DeWine is surrounded by a group of anti-abortion activists and fellow
sanctimonious politicians. The USA seemingly has an unending supply of evangelical
nutcases, one
example here of a woman allied to Donald Trump.
DeWine has been credited with being one of the first US Governors to take early action to
prevent the spread of Covid-19 by closing schools etc - in advance of pronouncements by
Donald Trump. |
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As an aside, it has been argued
that Christian persecution of cats (especially black ones) may have in part been
responsible for the Black Death in Europe in the Middle Ages. So many cats were burned to
death or otherwise mercilessly killed on the orders of the Catholic Church that the rat
population was enabled to expand.
Crucifixion of cats is still apparently a feature of the Christian religion in some of the
more backward countries of Africa.
In China they still just boil cats and dogs alive in some rural areas - it is said to
improve the flavour of the meat. |
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Belarusian President Alexander
Lukashenko has laughed off the suggestion that his country should try to stem the spread
of the coronavirus, because he couldn't see the virus "flying around".
Speaking to a TV reporter at an indoor ice hockey match, he also claimed that crowds at
the match were fine because the coldness of the stadium would prevent the virus from
spreading.
There is no evidence that this could be the case and the coronavirus cannot be seen with
the naked eye.
Unlike most of Europe, Belarus has not placed any restrictions on sports events.
"There are no viruses here," Mr Lukashenko said. "You haven't seen them
flying around, have you? I don't see them either! This is a fridge.
Sport, particularly the ice, this fridge here, that's the best antiviral cure!" |
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One of the most repressive
states in the world is Turkmenistan.
Many experts were concerned its government might be hiding the truth, which could disrupt
attempts to end the pandemic.
While the world battled coronavirus and more and more countries locked down their
populations, Turkmenistan held a mass cycling rally to mark World Health Day. Use of the
word 'coronavirus' was banned.
People wearing face masks or talking about the virus were even liable to
be arrested by undercover police, RSF says.
Turkmenistan is one of the world's most closed-off countries. The government has an
absolute monopoly of the media and foreign news websites are blocked.
The country has so far reported no cases of the virus. Neighbouring
Iran, meanwhile, had reported more than 47,000. |
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That the pandemic occurred is
not Trump’s fault.
The unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of
stockpiled respirators because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in
2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear is
Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying
many multiples of the pre-crisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault.
Air travellers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds
alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that
the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s
fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close
Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but
again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.
The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is
Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and
non-existent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his
failure to act in time.
The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad
if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric
to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing
of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew?
Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled
by mediocrities? Trump’s fault.
The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of
the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.extracted from an
article in The Atlantic. (link no longer exists?)
Ultimately, the reason why China's terrible
behaviour both in respect of its animal rights record and its withholding of information
on human to human virus transmission - which itself led arguably to the world-wide scale
of the pandemic - will be forgotten is simply one of trade. Their
revival of the old silk road is itself a trillion dollar project.
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Jared
Kushner, Trump's son-in-law is still seeking evictions of his tenants who have been left
destitute by the coronavirus pandemic. Yet he is still seeking relief from his own
creditors.
The
decision (later reversed) to place Jarad Kushner in a position to help oversee the
economic recovery of the USA was ridiculed widely.
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Meanwhile the behaviour of the
general public in the UK was as bad as ever - with seemingly no let-up in the amount of
plastics and related water strewn around towns and the countryside. Fly-tipping of
domestic DIY and other waste also markedly increased.
A photographer recorded these
images of discarded rubber gloves on the pavements of Nottingham.
Whilst the behaviour of the rich is often appalling, that of many 'ordinary' people is
little better, even in countries that have adequate waste disposal systems. A vast amount
of plastics and other PPE trash will end up in the oceans having been discarded in Asian
and African countries, adding to the toll on wildlife. |
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Iran has been reported to have dug large mass graves (evidence from satellite
pictures). However, governments in that part of the world do that sort of thing routinely!
It is widely thought that
Iran has not been reporting the full scale of local infection with Covid-19, and there
continues to be much suspicion about China also. New York has also been digging mass
graves for possibly temporary internment. A disproportionate number of New Yorkers
who died were from lower class slum neighbourhoods with high population densities - as
might be expected.
