Déjà vu all over again

News blues…

A look back at the influenza pandemic of 1918 reveals that a chaotic White House response to a public-health emergency is nothing new. 

President Trump talks about the fight against COVID-19 as a war against an invisible enemy, but a little over 100 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson was fighting both kinds of war: the Great War in Europe was in its final stages as the flu pandemic swept the globe, including the United States. Wilson chose to focus on the battlefronts of Europe, virtually ignoring the disease that ravaged the home front and killed about 675,000 Americans.
The 45th President has made inaccurate public statements about the coronavirus — last Wednesday, for example, Facebook removed a video in which President Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19—but, by comparison, the 28th president never uttered a single public statement about the 1918-1919 flu pandemic.
In terms of managing a federal response to the pandemic, “there was no leadership or guidance of any kind directly from the White House,” historian John M. Barry, says the author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. “Wilson wanted the focus to remain on the war effort. Anything negative was viewed as hurting morale and hurting the war effort.”
Tevi Troy’s book Shall We Wake the President: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office, ranks Wilson as the #1 worst president in a disaster: “The federal response to the influenza outbreak in 1918 can best be described as neglectful. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died without President Wilson saying anything or mobilizing nonmilitary components of the U.S. government to help the civilian population.”

President Wilson, until now ranked the #1 worst president in a disaster can rest assured: he’s now #2. Number One goes to The Donald.
Trump was 100% correct when he said we’d “get sick and tired of all the winning,” and that we’d tell him, 'Please, please, we can't win anymore….”
Winning a la Trump is killing us.

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Now This: Say Goodbye to Trump’s Cabinet (5:52 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After 7 months of lockdown and severe pandemic fatigue, I drove 50 kms to Mooi River (“pretty” river) to visit friends. The village of Mooi River serves surrounding farmers/farms in the foothills of the Drakensberg. 

 While waiting for my friends to guide me to their home, I snapped this photograph of a traditional Zulu songoma. 

I also snapped a warning to drivers regarding the state of road (photo below). 

The phenomenon of potholes is par for the course in South Africa. Few roads are absent potholes. The interprovincial N3 is relatively free of potholes – as one might expect given the exorbitant road tolls one pays coming and going. I paid R53 at the Mooi River toll gate to access the village and R37 to leave. (Approximate total of tolls one way from Durban to Johannesburg is R250 – steep for your average South African driver.)

Overall, my visit was restorative. I needed it. Safety first, but positive human interaction is vital, too.