streaming consciousness…

Pandemics, Politics, Global Warming, DNA and DJT…

I don’t often write about politics nor pandemics, not because I don’t care, or that I have no interest, but because I have other greater interests, and politics have no easy solutions—and many commentators. But there are meta-theses to this pandemic that are not being discusses by anyone, and so that’s why I feel compelled to comment. The first issue is easy, the treachery of the US government in dealing with this natural disaster, not to be confused with incompetence, which is the normal modus operandi of the Trump administration. But to send people to their probable deaths in uncertain circumstances, when such deaths could be easily prevented, is not just murder. It is genocide, of the genus poverty, thus the annihilation of one class by another higher one. This could be easily prevented by the economic support of those people, from the taxes that they have paid, the same as is done for the corporate entities which are sacred to the US capitalist system, and which all Western European countries are doing for their people.

The virus itself seems to have a reverse genocide in mind. So why no one has talked about the apparent propensity of the virus to specifically attack the colonial powers is uncanny, but there it is: the USA, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany at the top of the list, all the main Western powers reeling from the infection, while other DNA haplogroups suffer much less, if at all. An easy read would maybe say that it is the freedom that these countries embrace that is their own worst enemy, and that may be true. The logic here, of course, is that these people just can’t conform to the lockdown situation that the circumstances require, and so seal their fate as victims. Equally, they are less likely to be controlled by autocratic governments which are expert at compelling obedience. When it was just Italy and Spain, age was considered the most likely crucial factor, but the US and UK have no super-abundance of retirees, to my knowledge.

But now with Russia riding high in the Top 10, the freedom argument suffers, also, Russia at the forefront of the Soviet control system that functioned so ruthlessly for so many years, the idea being that the political control of a generation ago was still extant to the extent that people would be more compliant with the demands of the lockdown. Other East European countries show increasing numbers, but still far below that of the ‘West’. Turkey is also raging, for what that is worth, it certainly not ‘East Europe’ politically, but not so different in deep ancentry, and very close to Iran in that regard (Turkey is not very ‘Turkic’ genetically FWIW). Iran was the first non-Far-Eastern country seriously afflicted with the virus and the only country in the Top 10 for number of cases since the beginning (China is now #11 if their numbers are to be believed). The main difference between East and West Europe genomically is the R1a haplogroup (y-DNA) versus the the R1b, respectively, so different, but not radically so.

Another consideration is not just the number of cases but their severity, and in this case the difference between East and West IS radical. We gloat over Germany’s reaction to the virus (even though it is #6 and still increasing) not because of the number of cases, obviously, but because of the low number of deaths, at least compared to the graveyards of Italy, Spain, France, US, and the UK. But this is 4.5 times that of Russia, with today almost the same number of cases, though rising faster. Now certainly there is some lag time between the onset of conditions and ultimate death or recovery, but could genetics also be a factor? (Let’s leave the question of press bias toward the West for later). Even Germany has a large percentage of the R1a genome, it the true ‘Aryan’ genome, if there is one, extending in a continuum from Scandinavia through the north-of-Caucasus (hint hint) and Central Asia all the way to northern India, which also has a low number of deaths, also, respective to the number of cases, and which is steadily increasing, if not yet raging. Russia IS raging this week, Turkey WAS last week, and the US has been steadily for the last month or two. It sucks.

But there IS press bias toward the West, for certain, the case of Germany already mentioned, in which they are something of a bright spot for the West, however meager compared to elsewhere. And then there is New Zealand, which supposedly is ‘stamping out’ the virus, all evidence to the contrary, and despite the fact that they are #83 in the world for number of cases, not bad, but hardly braggable (is that a word?). Of course, all numbers are relative to population size, especially, among other circumstances, island status not least among them. So for an island of 4.6M, New Zealand’s stats are nothing special, worse, in fact than Big Bro Australia, though NZ gets all the press. You need a good agent, I guess. Enter Jacinda. But the real success stories are all in Far East Asia, which, but for the exceptions of Japan and Singapore, are almost unbelievable, especially Taiwan and Hong Kong, it with a land border to the origin point of China, yet only a thousand cases and four (4) deaths, after five full months.

The question, again, is why? Besides DNA, and freedom-fixes, there is also the cleanliness factor, which the West rates not so highly in, despite all our pretensions. Now I won’t insult the French, but there is good evidence that a lower-class Brit of the 1800’s might go his entire life without a bath, and those cowboys out West probably got their only baths in those gilded palaces of sin which they visited when the cows were suitably delivered to market for slaughter or transport back East. Gold miners might have bathed more, but only likely from the Chinese influence, hint hint. I know from my own experience that Asians are pretty darn clean, two baths a day quite common, and three not unheard of. Is that the crucial point of difference? Or is it DNA? Or is it the difference between unruly Westerners as opposed to obedient Easterners? Nature’s revenge against her most vicious rapists? Montezuma’s revenge against the conquerors? None of the above? All of the above?

The other issue never mentioned is the role of cities in all this. City boundaries are loosely defined, true, and stats are usually compiled by states, and countries, not cities. And that is unfortunate, because the fact is clear: viruses love cities, and crowds, the more the better. Any one who has read ‘Plagues and Peoples’ (McNeill 1976) knows that. Add to that any proximity to animals, especially from the farm and the wild, and you’ve got a perfect storm. Chinese ‘wet markets’, unfortunately, DO contain live animals, which most Asian markets do not, BTW, so there is much of the problem. But don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. I’ve spent six out of the last twenty-four months in China, and gotten sick at least twice, if not three times, with similar flu-like symptoms each time. And I don’t get sick, not usually.

But it was on April 29, little more than a week ago, that Trump’s chosen sources predicted that the US would reach 74K cases of Coronavirus on August 4. We reached that total yesterday, and are far past it today. You do the math. There are still many questions to be asked and answered. The good news is that Nature is winning this battle, and nothing is likely to change that any time soon. Why is that important? Because global warming will likely be a moot issue before the human species goes extinct, and that is a reason to celebrate. Sometimes the suffering of a few is necessary for the good of the many. If two-thirds of the cases are in the Western colonial powers, then so be it. There’s more than a little synchronicity to that. After all, we are the ones causing global warming.