^{Jared Kushner}

Today we hear how Donald Trump has called forth his sociopathic son-in-law, Jared Kushner to the daily ‘coronavirus taskforce briefing,’ with the brief to:

“Break down every barrier needed to make sure the teams can succeed.” Guardian

Kushner told reporters Trump was concerned about the supply shortages and had only heard about them that morning from “friends of his in New York.”

It’s somewhat strange that Donald Trump should be so ill-informed about the supply shortages, when only yesterday the Guardian newspaper led with the headline:

“Trump says US stockpile of protective equipment nearly gone amid coronavirus”

Donald Trump has admitted the US government’s emergency stockpile of protective equipment is nearly exhausted because of the extraordinary demands of the coronavirus pandemic…” Guardian

One of the sad things about social media has been the ability, by those who wish to make use of it, of lying through one’s teeth, often stating the most outrageous untruths, knowing that while many will recognise them as such there will be a hard core of brain-dead individuals who simply take it at face value and spread the word around the internet.

Right-wing radio ‘jocks’ in America have been using this tactic for decades. People like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and of course, Alex Jones with his infamous website, Infowars, have used this media to spread fake news and disinformation nationwide. The advent of the internet and social media like Twitter and Facebook (plus a whole torrent of others grabbing the lucrative slice of advertising revenue that goes hand-in-hand with these sites) has really opened up the floodgates for this right-wing poison to pour through.

Jared Kushner is expert at telling lies. He does it all the time, just like his father-in-law.  It’s so blatant that no-one with any cognitive skills would believe it for an instant. Sadly, decades of a US education system gradually stripped of funds, good teachers, and with school buildings left in serious disrepair, has left large sections of the American community seriously lacking in the ability to think for themselves. They have become pawns of the radio ‘jocks’, the fake news pundits, and even of the President of the United States himself and his dysfunctional family and hangers-on, who continuously desecrate  the Office they pretend to honour.

Kushner, it seems, is to usurp the responsibilities of the Vice President Mike Pence, only recently charged with taking control of the coronavirus outbreak.  Despite much denial, it would seem that yet again Trump is reverting to what he knows best, removing folk who don’t perform to his satisfaction. Or, maybe it’s just another way of absolving himself from any responsibility. It’s always been Trump’s modus operandi: never his fault, never his failing, always down to someone else.

The truth is he’s always been an abject failure. How many bankruptcies? Not his fault, of course. We learned from Michael Cohen, once Trump’s personal lawyer, that on Trump’s instructions:

“…he had sent letters to Trump’s high schools, colleges and the College Board (creator of the SAT), threatening them with legal action and jail time if they ever released Trump’s academic records.” Forbes

Trump lied when he insisted he “graduated first in his class” from the Wharton School at Pennsylvania University In fact, he wasn’t even close and graduated without honors. His father was an extremely wealthy and powerful New York figure. It’s likely money greased Trump’s path into Penn State.

So, perhaps, in reality Trump himself has been a victim of the sad demise of good educational standards in America. Though, in his case, he had the opportunities, just never took advantage of them. His academic record was abysmal and, according to those who knew him at the time, his attendance at college was minimal.

Hardly a great resumé for a future leader of the free world.

Still, Jared Kushner is obviously a smart lad, so maybe he’ll be able single-handedly to bring the coronavirus epidemic in America to a rapid end. After all, he did solve the Israeli/Palestinian crisis in the Middle East all on his own – didn’t he?

Well, didn’t he?

Covid-19 – described by many in authority as the greatest threat to mankind since the second world war. Almost one million human beings infected. To date nearly 50,000 deaths: over 13,000 dead in Italy, 10,000 in Spain, 4,000 in France, and over 5,000 in the USA (US experts predict a rise to 240,000  in the US alone before this thing is over).\

^{Click To Track Covid-19 Live}

It’s natural in great crises for we humans to look for someone or something to blame. Inept political leaders can often use a similar tactic to subvert focus from their own deficiencies in handling an emergency, just as Trump has insisted on calling Covid-19 the ‘Chinese virus’, as though the Chinese invented it deliberately and set it loose on the world.

Of course, the idea is ridiculous. Yet it has taken hold on social media and spread almost as fast as the virus itself. Chinese and Asian people are being snubbed, and sometimes abused and beaten, by ignorant pigs who take out their fear on innocent people.

The facts are clear: scientists have been predicting exactly this eventuality for years. In 2011, an 87 page report by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) into the probability of future pandemics concluded:

1) there is not sufficient interoperable, globally shared information available in real-time about pandemic risk inventories, hazards or threatened segments of the built or natural infrastructure,

2) there is a dramatic lack of forward thinking and planning for the creation and distribution of medical countermeasures—including drugs, vaccines and surge capacity, which, in part, arises because of the lack of real-time information,

3) there is a serious requirement for international harmonization of regulations across the pandemic spectrum, and

4) there needs to be financially sustainable basic research efforts upon which is  based the preparation, mitigation, response and rebuilding that will be required before, during and after a pandemic.

In other words, then as now, there was a total lack of infrastructure in place to combat a pandemic like Covid-19. The report set out what was needed in terms of international cooperation, between both scientists and politicians, to a) prevent a possible occurrence, and b) deal swiftly and effectively with any viral pandemic that ‘got through the net’.

Needless to say, that report was ignored by the political elite who just crossed their fingers and hoped, if it was going to happen, it would be on someone else’s watch.

The result of such irresponsibility and apathy, from world leaders handed the power to take such decisions by the citizens they were trusted to protect, is the dire situation we find ourselves in today.

Trump, in America, is blaming previous administrations for not developing the necessary resources to fight the Covid-19 outbreak. A fine example of ‘passing the buck’ when in truth the framework was well established in the US prior to Trump’s presidency, and was dismantled by him with the closures of federal environmental and disease-control agencies by the simple act of de-funding them:

In 2018, the US Center for Disease Control was forced to cut 80% of its efforts to prevent global disease outbreaks due to lack of money. Ultimately, the department went from working in 49 countries to just 10.

Trump shut down the entire global-health-security unit of the National Security Council.

He eliminated the US government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund.

He reduced national health spending by $15 billion.

In the UK, successive Tory governments have cut back on essential services, gutted the National Health Service, and failed to keep up stocks of vital health equipment, like ventilators.

The result, gloriously demonstrated by the latest impostor to reside in 10 Downing Street, was the flounderings and ditherings by Johnson and his gang of political outcasts, which dove them deeper and deeper into the mire of ineptitude, until Johnson’s only recourse was a shaky and apathetic daily Churchillian-type rallying-cry to the people, in the vain hope they might think he was actually doing something.

Bolsonaro in Brazil; Viktor Orbán of Hungary; Duterte in the Philippines, and numerous other far right-wing wannabee dictators have all displayed a total lack of care for the people they lord it over. The last decade has seen a splintering of the world’s peoples into a form of tribalism not seen for generations. It has allowed the rise of these thuggish individuals and created a power structure dangerous to us all.

Covid-19 is not just the start. It all began a long time ago. Animal to human transmission of dangerous organisms is nothing new.  As David Quammen,  author of “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic,”writes in the NY Times:

The list of such viruses emerging into humans sounds like a grim drumbeat: Machupo, Bolivia, 1961; Marburg, Germany, 1967; Ebola, Zaire and Sudan, 1976; H.I.V., recognized in New York and California, 1981; a form of Hanta (now known as Sin Nombre), southwestern United States, 1993; Hendra, Australia, 1994; bird flu, Hong Kong, 1997; Nipah, Malaysia, 1998; West Nile, New York, 1999; SARS, China, 2002-3; MERS, Saudi Arabia, 2012; Ebola again, West Africa, 2014. And that’s just a selection. Now we have nCoV-2019, the latest thump on the drum.

The latest ‘thump of the drum’, and certainly one of the worst in our modern era. Though quite definitely not the last. The correlation between climate change and human infection by viral, bacterial, and parasitic organisms is well documented. Covid-19 will be one of many, some much more virulent and deadly than our latest adversary. Here again, our politicians insist on showing us their backsides as they bury their heads in the sands of complacency. The Paris agreement on climate change, that had the politicians clapping and hurrahing at their own ingenuity, seems a long time ago. It was in 2016. It’s now four years later and what’s to show for it. The major polluters: China, the US, Australia, and to some extent, Europe, have achieved little- indeed, in some cases, like the US and China – actually gone backwards and are thrusting ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Is it any wonder we’re all locked down, the world economy is crashing around our ears, and thousands are now dying every day, because of our politicians’ ineptitude, their preference for the behind the scenes financial handouts of the fossil fuel companies and their associated industries, rather than the welfare of those who chose them to govern.

The OECD report concludes:

The magnitude of the threat of infectious diseases also  necessitates a major global, investigative effort. The example of the “Rice Institutes” funded by the Rockefeller Foundation for fifteen years and sustained by the Consultative Group in International Agricultural Research, provides a framework for an interdisciplinary, collaborative and synergistic network of Infectious Disease International Research Centers. These should have a permanent faculty and staff as well as visiting fellowships and studentships. The lasting positive impacts of international research centers are many, including fostering long-term relationships between scientists, establishing a culture of research responsibility and serving as the nucleus for safe applications of interdisciplinary sciences globally.

The key to any progress against infectious diseases is a structure that brings together these diverse interests in a lasting fashion. Without such a structure, the commitment to reducing the impact of infectious diseases on our national, economic and personal security will be subject to the political vagaries of the moment, leaving us unprepared for the next global health crisis. [my bold/underline]

This was back in 2011. It never happened. The “next global health crisis” has  now arrived.

Self-isolation: it used to be what hermits did, or eccentric millionaires like Howard Hughes, hide themselves away in caves or isolated mansions, dependent on the state of their wallets.

Now though, we’re all doing it. And why? Because a microscopic particle we cannot see is trying to invade our bodies and kill us, like something out of some 1960’s Hammer horror movie starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Last week I took my wife to Paris. A romantic second honeymoon, perhaps, or a night at the opera? No, I took her to the Charles de Gaulle airport to catch one of the last flights out of the country headed for the United States.

We’ve lived in France for five years, but eighteen months ago she became ill. It was diagnosed as ovarian cancer, stage three plus, they said.

I was told she would die. Not straight away. She underwent intensive chemotherapy followed by a major operation that removed much of her inside. Then there was more chemo. She lost all her hair, was on umpteen pills every day to control the nausea and devastation wrought on her body by the chemo and all she’d gone through.

No, she wouldn’t die straight away, maybe in a year, or maybe two if she was lucky. I found myself mourning her loss while she was still alive, wondering when it would happen; when the lurking cancer cells would erupt once more in a final deadly surge of multiplication.

Then, out of the blue, came the reprieve. A mutated gene was discovered in her cancer cells. There was a new drug that would take out that gene and stop the cells from reproducing. The odds of her having a recurrence would be drastically reduced. There was a strong chance she could live out a normal life just by swallowing four pills a day.

Why was I not hysterical with happiness? For a full year I had expected the woman I loved to die very soon. The doctors had been specific. Her chance of recovery was virtually nil. They didn’t tell her that, but they told me. Now, it seemed, that threat was removed. Why was I not dancing with joy? Why was the only feeling I had one of vague disappointment, coupled with an intense sense of guilt for feeling that inexplicable emotion?

For weeks I wrestled with a sense of self-loathing that I could feel such a negative reaction. I knew it was illogical, yet I could not get past it. The only reason I could determine was that I’d been mourning the death of my dear wife for a long time, living with the knowledge the cancer would kill her, and her living presence now seemed unreal, as a ghost denying me closure.

We began to drift apart. She never left the house except for visiting the hospital for checkups. She needed a bedroom of her own, so we slept apart. She would watch television, or read, in the living room. I spent more and more time upstairs in my den.

One day she turned to me and said simply, “I want to go home to America.”

She knew I would never go back there. Fifteen years in the United States left me determined I would not set foot on its shores again. I was settled and content to live in France. She, I learned, had never been happy to leave America. And so it was on Thursday last we stood together for the final time, clinging to each other in Charles de Gaulle airport, not wanting to separate but knowing we must accept the inevitable, even as the tears ran down our cheeks.

Eighteen years of marriage cannot be snuffed out like a candle flame. We still love each other, of that there is no doubt, but the culture difference finally won out. She’s an American; I’m a European. She cannot live on my continent and I cannot live on hers.

We will continue our marriage though it will be entirely by phone and video chat.  We have self-isolated, only in our case it has not been entirely due to that microscopic particle we call Covid-19.

Like many throughout the world we are now confined to our homes, our individual homes, and provided we’re spared the ravages of that virus, we both know that one day the tears that insist on welling up will dry, and life will move onward again.

Until then our self-isolation will continue, though maybe for long after the coronavirus is finally defeated.