Relax? Don't Do It!

I thought we'd been spared.

It looked there was light at the end of the COVID tunnel.  Despite a rise in infections in the West and a tandem increase in RSV and flu infections, COVID infection rates in late 2022 were still below what they had been in late 2021, the RSV spike among children was due to a lack of exposure to earlier respiratory viruses (and was likely to peak soon and fall off as a result), and the flu spike was likely to follow that same trajectory.  Certainly, I thought, the pandemic would finally fizzle out by this coming spring.  

Then the Commies running the so-called People's Republic of China ruined everything.

China is relaxing and in some cases ending its zero-COVID restrictions and allowing the virus to spread all over the country like runny jelly on toast.  As a result, there have been 250 million COVID infections in China - 18 percent of the country's population - although the government has officially reported only 63,000 cases in the past couple of weeks.  Effective immediately, the government won't be reporting new cases at all.  Meanwhile, Chinese hospitals and crematoria can't keep up with the spike in cases and deaths.

So what does that have to do with the rest of the world? Not only will the Chinese stop testing foreign nationals entering the country, it will start allowing - in a controlled manner, the Chinese government has cryptically explained - Chinese citizens to start traveling outside the country.

Unless other countries rigidly test Chinese travelers entering their domains, we can expect the horrors of 2020 to happen all over again.

And even if prior infections and vaccinations in North America and Europe blunt the spread of the lastest COVID wave now hitting China - the largest wave anywhere since March 2020 - the case and death numbers will still be high . . . particularly in the United States, where right-wing science skeptics still won't get vaccinated.

In other words, don't look at a bright side to all this because there isn't one.

I've been unable to go to many places since the pandemic started nearly three years ago because, even when restrictions were lifted in the United States, I've still had to wear face coverings and engage in some social distancing in indoor public spaces, and as I am uncomfortable going places under these circumstances,  I don't really go anywhere I don't have to other than meetings of the stamp collector's club I belong to.  Many annual events I've regularly attended have been scaled back or canceled altogether.  I still won't attend any events that haven't been cancelled if they're indoors.  But I thought we might be getting toward the end of the pandemic by April 2023 at the earliest.  Hey, Donald Trump wasn't necessarily lying back in 2020 when he said that SARS CoV-2 would go away by April; he just never said what year. 😃

The Chinese have seen to it - all for the sake of  the mighty yuan (and avoiding public unrest that could cause the government to collapse and the army to side with the people) - that this pandemic will go on indefinitely.  And they'll largely escape blame because ,well, we need their supply chains to function.  And the World Health Organization has inexplicably treated China with kid gloves, taking Xi Jinping's propaganda at face value and letting efforts to find the source of COVID atrophy.  The Chinese, of course, are safe in the knowledge that no one in the West will attack them for fear of being labelled racist.

 I am so confident that I will never travel abroad now thanks to all of this that I'm thinking of using my passport - with pages as empty as a monograph book of Irish erotic art - for kindling.  I've gone back to finding the alternative way of seeing Europe - scrolling through landscapes on Google Earth.  Yesterday I virtually visited Holland.

I disagree with most of what the Republicans stand for, but if the House Republican majority in the new Congress makes good on plans to investigate the origins of COVID, I'll be egging them on enthusiastically.

Since I can't go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York or see the latest movies in the theaters, I'll have nothing else to do. 

China's Reward?

It never ceases to amaze me how people are undeservedly rewarded for the damage they cause to civilization.  Why is Donald Trump still considered a leading contender for the Presidency in 2024 after having staged a near-coup back in January?  How did Rush Limbaugh get away with being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom after using his power and influence to smother voices opposed to his political views?  How come Madonna got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after destroying the form by pushing her lightweight, oversexualized brand of pop and also promoting hip-hop?  And why, despite having started a pandemic that ruined everyone's lives- possibly for good - does the People's Republic of China still get to host the Winter Olympics? 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (above) has successfully gotten his country to evade blame for giving the world COVID, even though it originated in Wuhan due to either unsanitary conditions in a wet market or a botched experiment in a virology lab, and the Chinese government punished doctors who poke out about it even as they were letting the Chinese people get infected and allowing them to spread it to other parts of the world and create a pandemic - the word coming from the Greek words meaning "all people," because that's exactly who can get COVID now.   And thanks to Omicron, that may very well be who gets it.  And yet there Xi will be in February, presiding over the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a city that should never have gotten the Winter Games in the first place owing to the fact that it hosted the Summer Games as recently as 2008 and to its humungous size despite Winter Olympic locales usually being small towns in remote, snowy areas (northeastern China is neither).  Beijing only got the Winter Olympics because the International Olympic Committee was clearly afraid to cross China and the committee members really, really, really wanted to avoid giving the Winter Games to the only other bidder for 2022, Almaty.

Well, guess what!  Numerous countries, led by the United States, are not sending diplomats or government representatives to the Winter Olympics - not to protest the failure of China to contain COVID  but to protest China's treatment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.  (Which is near the part of Kazakhstan where Almaty is.)   Take COVID out of the picture, b the way, and that would have been more than enough reason to instigate a diplomatic boycott.  Xi has vowed to revenge, but what more can he do after running up big trade deficits with everyone else and getting 273 million people and counting sick with SARS-on-steroids?  Oh, right, invade Taiwan. Well, if Xi does start a war, it's likely to be for something other than sour grapes over the empty seats for the diplomatic corps in the stands at the Winter Olympic opening ceremonies. Maybe he should pay attention to the empty seats in the stands for people who would have bought tickets to see the Winter Games in person - had it not been for COVID.

"Steve," you say, aren't you concerned that the Chinese government will ban your blog in China after what you've just said?"  Hah!  You think I care?  Facebook already bans it, so why should I mind if Xi does?

And yes, I still think it. 😉   

Summer Reading

Trump had been trying to stop it, but John Bolton's new book is going full tilt boogie, and the bombshells are dropping and detonating like napalm-filled incendiary devices, threatening to defoliate Trump's leadership veneer and expose the emperor as having no clothes. 

My, I'm getting poetic here!

In his book "The Room Where it Happened," Bolton has revealed many embarrassing things about the current White House occupant,  For one thing, he asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to by more soybeans and wheat from American farmers to help him win re-election, and he had no problems with Xi putting the Muslim Uighurs of Sinkiang in northwestern China in concentration camps.  Bolton also says that Trump asked if  Finland was a part of Russia (it was, actually, until 1917) was ignorant of the fact that Great Britain is a nuclear power, and has obstructed of justice as easy as breathing.

The Justice Department's attempts to book the book will likely come to nothing, since much of the most damning information Bolton has on Trump is already out.  But Bolton is hardly a hero; he sat on this information and teased about being able to testify in Trump's impeachment trial but held back so as to ensure that these facts would only come out with his book and enable him to make a ton of money.  In which case, I would recommend checking it out of your local library - assuming it's not closed due to COVID-19.  And even if Bolton does make a lot of money from this, his earnings may likely be confiscated if there is any classified information in his book, as the Justice department claims.   

Bolton's failure to come forward during the impeachment trial still has a lot of Democrats angry, but it's better this information about Trump comes out this way than not at all.  And the Democrats can impeach Trump again and get Bolton to testify - Lord knows Trump has done more than enough since December 2019 to warrant a second congressional indictment.

"WHO The F**k Are YOU?"

Donald Trump announced this past week that the United States is now withholding funds to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the midst of the worst pandemic in over a hundred years.  The only people who approve of this policy are Trump's sycophants, which, I'm sorry to say, include the entire Republican congressional caucus.

Trump's rationale for withhold funds from the WHO is based on is failure to stop the coronavirus from spreading beyond China and taking Chinese assurances of the virus's containment at face value.  Shortly after Trump's announcement, the media started playing clips of Trump from January and February praising the WHO and Chinese President Xi Jinping for their leadership on the virus problem.

It is true that the WHO put too much trust and not enough verification - a spin on Ronald Reagan's favorite Russian proverb, "Trust but verify" - in the Chinese leadership, as Kathy Gilsinan's article in The Atlantic explains.  The WHO was impressed with China's efforts to handle the crisis, even though Chinese coronavirus policy was based largely on wishful thinking and spin.  But the WHO also recognized the severity of the disease and, regardless of how it was going down in China, warned the rest of the world to prepare for a global health emergency.  Trump sort of didn't want to do that.  Now that the United States has the largest umber of coronavirus cases, he's trying to deflect blame to others.  Some government officials overseeing health policy conceded that the WHO made some serious mistakes but caution - their cautions falling of deaf ears, of course - that we should wait until after the pandemic has run its course to assess those mistakes.    

Trump's lack of consistency on many issues - he was once for fighting climate change before he was against it - is annoying even in normal circumstances, but here it's gone beyond the pale.  When he was downplaying the health crisis, he wasn't even consistent with  the WHO while he was praising the organization; he declined the tests it offered to the United States when this disease got serious.  Even if you accept the idea that the WHO let COVID-19 go full tilt boogie, the Chinese still deceived the WHO into making decisions based on unreliable information.  Blaming the WHO for the pandemic is like blaming Eve for the fall of man, even though the serpent in this case is the Chinese Politburo.

A rather loaded analogy, and an ironic one to use a week after Easter, I know, but if the shoe fits . . .

Fire and Rain

The sanctions against North Korea to deter its development of a nuclear weapon this past Sunday came too late, as Kim Jong Un's government reportedly miniaturized a nuclear device to fit onto one of its missiles, which was reported on Tuesday.

The dear leader promised "fire and fury" against his adversary like the world "has never seen before."

Kim said that?  No, Donald Trump!

Later it was reported that North Korea was considering an attack on Guam.

As dangerous as Kim and his paranoia toward the United States are, Trump's airheaded machismo is exponentially worse.  The only way to deal with North Korea at this point is to try to find a diplomatic solution to avoid a military confrontation that could lead to a full-scale war worse than the one on the Korean peninsula in the early 1950s.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been making one declaration after another that the U.S. has no intention of removing Kim from power and uniting Korea under the government in Seoul, and now Trump has undermined him by answer Kim's nasty rhetoric with even nastier rhetoric.  With North Korea promising to rain fire down on the United States - including the East Coast! - those fallout shelters I used to see as a kid are going to have to be put back into service.  

And the Mormons can be expected to congregate en masse along the banks of the Missouri River for the Second Coming when Moroni blows his horn. :-O  

And remember, South Korea would be annihilated by a North Korean attack and and Japan is under greater threat than we are by virtue of its proximity to Korea.  South Korea's forces are too small to beat back North Korea alone, and Japan doesn't have much of a military to begin with these days.  Guess who's expected to step into the breach.  Guess.

Oh yeah, only 37 percent of voters approve of the way Trump is handling the Korea crisis. Good news, until you realize the 37 percent are the same voters that Steve Bannon wants to keep Trump connected to.

With hopes for a negotiated settlement with North Korea slipping away, we have to pin our hopes on the President . . . of China. Xi Jinping is the last person who can talk Kim Jong Un of the ledge over self-destruction.  Kim is, somewhat ironically, interested in survival, and if Xi can convince his fellow Communist leader that restraint in handling nuclear arms is his best recourse, that will help a lot.  But I don't see how he does that.  I don't even see how anyone keeps Trump restrained.

In the meantime, we have Trump trash-talking a guy who might be able to take out Los Angeles in a few months and take out Guam sooner.  I've never been afraid of nuclear war in my entire life, not even when Reagan was President, but I am now.  Even with Secretary Tillerson saying that Americans can "sleep well at night."  

And deciding to hold three consecutive Olympiads in the Far East has turned out to be a really stupid idea. :-(