Normalizing

It's that increasingly dreaded end-of week reviewing of numbers and facing Covid’s devastation on our planet:
Worldwide (Map) 
November 19 – 56,188,000 confirmed infections; 1,348,600 deaths
October 22 – 41,150,000 confirmed infections; 1,130.410 deaths

US (Map)  
November 19 – 11,525,600 confirmed infections; 250,485 deaths
October 22 – 8,333,595 confirmed infections; 222,100 deaths

SA (Coronavirus portal)  
November 19 – 757,145 confirmed infections; 20,556 deaths
October 22 – 708,360 confirmed infections; 18,750 deaths

News blues…

While the particulars change day-by-day, each day seems to offer a rehasd  of yesterday’s news:

• Covid-19 wreaks havoc around the world, and particularly in the US (“North Dakota COVID Mortality Rate Highest in the World, With 1 in Every 1,000 Residents Dead”).
• Donald Trump wreaks havoc to the rule of law and highlights the weakness at the heart of a democratic republic that espouses “the rule of law .” 
• Climate change, unacknowledged, wreaks havoc on the environment .
• Honest, coherent, forward-looking leadership remains absent. 

I got the blues as the US normalizes havoc!

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In South Africa, Covid-19 cases jump by 2,888 in a day  

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Healthy futures, anyone?

Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health:

Every day we depend on biodiversity (the sheer variety of life found on Earth) to keep us alive and healthy. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the foods we eat and the medications we take are all by-products of a healthy planet. Read more  >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The rainy season arrives with drama and fanfare: hail stones, the size of tennis balls, fell in Pietermaritzburg yesterday . Here, a 15-minute drive away, hail stones were of inferior size, mere marbles. 

Hooray for inferiority!

Lost the plot

News blues…

Recycled outrage. Current news isn’t new. That’s my conclusion about the current state of news reporting. US news anchors repeatedly express, 1) outrage about Trump’s latest gambit to accept reality, 2) outrage about the Trump administration’s inaction to address the unprecedented surge in Covid infections, and 3) routrage about the most recent Republican election shenanigans. That’s about sums up “new” news.
While ordinary (thinking) people, grapple with understandably high levels of fear and anxiety associated with an out-of-control pandemic, US media increases the levels of anxiety and fear, but does not address it. Is fear un-American?
One solution? Replace the 24-hour news cycle with hour-long news shows each morning, noon, and evening. For the other nine hours, present shows on, say, how beautiful and beautifully complex is our planet - or show cartoons. 

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John Heilemann sums it up: Maximum moment of vulnerability…  (3:14 mins)

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Meidas Touch: They lie, you die  (1:00 mins)
Don Caron: Fifty ways to leave the White House  (3:00 mins)
Randy Rainbow: Don't Tell Donald He's NOT RE-ELECTED TODAY! (3:55 mins)

Healthy futures, anyone?

Got fleas?

Highly toxic insecticides used on cats and dogs to kill fleas are poisoning rivers…. The discovery is “extremely concerning” for water insects, and the fish and birds that depend on them – scientists… expect significant environmental damage is being done.
Research found fipronil in 99% of samples from 20 rivers and the average level of one particularly toxic breakdown product of the pesticide was 38 times above the safety limit. Fipronil and another nerve agent called imidacloprid that was found in the rivers have been banned from use on farms for some years. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Blogging each morning has, until now, provided a structured way to attend to the world’s goings-on, and to express my quirky point of view. I find, however, that I’m increasingly falling into a “oh, what’s the use,” state of mind. This is unconstructive… and it adds to my inherent anxiety.
Yesterday, I awoke with the dreadful feeling that I must find a way to fill in surplus time. This feeling is unfamiliar and further anxiety-provoking; seldom have I experienced time as heavy on my hands.
Today, I awoke with the same dreadful feeling.
I need a new direction that engages head, heart, and hands….

Power(lessness) of positive thinking

Humans. Gotta luv ‘em. Nurse says, “…Some coronavirus patients often don't want to believe that Covid-19 is real, even in their dying moments…”   (4:29 mins)

News blues…

The news media repeatedly repeats repeated news: Trump refuses to face reality; Republicans support Trump no matter what; Covid 19 crisis continues to surge; Covid-19 decimates We the People; Trump tweets while the US burns; corruption reigns; comedians try to make light of tragedy….

Healthy futures, anyone?

Australia’s latest State of the Climate Report finds,

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, mostly from fossil fuel burning, has driven more dangerous bushfires, rising sea levels and a rapid rise in the days where temperatures reach extreme levels.
“What we are seeing now is beyond the realm of what was possible previously,” said Dr Jaci Brown, director of CSIRO’s Climate Science Centre.”
Among the key findings, the report said Australia’s climate had warmed by 1.44C since 1910 with bushfire seasons getting longer and more dangerous. Australia’s oceans had warmed by 1C and were acidifying.
In a briefing to reporters on Tuesday, Dr Karl Braganza, manager of climate environmental prediction service at the bureau, said … “What we are seeing now is a more tangible shift in the extremes and we are starting to feel how that shift in the average is impacting on extreme events.
“So we don’t necessarily feel that 1.44C increase in average temperature, but we do feel those heatwaves and we feel that fire weather.” 

Read the article, “Rising levels of carbon dioxide increasing extreme weather events in Australia.” 

In conjunction with rising temperatures and sea level rise, “humanity’s destruction of biodiversity creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases like COVID-19”… 

Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by harboring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans like Ebola, HIV and dengue. But a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity …creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases… to arise—with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections among the well-being of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems. Is it possible, then, that it was human activity, such as road building, mining, hunting and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics …is unleashing new terrors today? … “We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbor so many species of animals and plants—and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote  in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I recommend treating pandemic fatigue with limited, safe, masked social interactions with friends and colleagues. Be prepared for side effects: Wanting more interactions with friends!
Successfully engaging with friends after months of lockdown feels liberating. Afterwards, however, lockdown feels like imprisonment. Lockdown isolation is stressful. One rebels, but… stays home, again. 

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A word of warning to anyone thinking of doing business in South Africa: Expect costly delays!
Protect yourself – even if things “sound” feasible and appear straight-forward.
Do not expect any busines-person to show up on the agreed upon schedule.
What can go wrong is likely to go wrong!
Unfortunately, I’m discovering this the hard way: financial loss, threated law suits, avoidance and displacement of responsibility….
Not to be cryptic, but for now, best I express chagrin, not air details.
To date, this extended stay in South Africa has confined me to a home not my own, and far from my immediate family; strained relationships with my extended family; included verbal abuse and insults from my mother; had a bad actor threaten to rape and kill me; put me in front of a local magistrate to request a restraining order; illegally (unbeknownst to me) carried licensed firearms in my vehicle in an (unsuccessful) effort, on behalf of my mother, to turn them in to local police….
Things can only get better. 

Right?

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.