Comment du Jour

 COVID Crisis Devastates Global Health, Stability

The global pandemic has devastated health standards, the economy, and through stress and the undertow of uncertainty and hardships has affected the sanity of citizens worldwide.  Lockdowns, arbitrary regulations, school closings are taking their toll on the social fabric.   

Now as a second wave of the Wuhan Covid virus is sweeping Western Europe, and spiking in places as varied is South Africa, India and Brazil, Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO’s Regional Director for Europe warns, “This moment represents a tipping-point in the course of the pandemic, where science, politics, technology and values must form a united front, in or to push back this  persistent and elusive virus.”   He added, that “more than 230 million people are living in      countries under full national lockdown, and more governments are expected to announce lockdowns.”  

Last year more than 26 million COVID-19 cases were confirmed throughout Europe.  Dr. Kluge added “This is an alarming situation, which means that for a short period of time we need to do more than we have done and to intensify the public health.”  Two million people have died worldwide. 

Earlier in the crisis  people assumed and were told, “Europe got it right in treating and isolating” the virus.  Maybe for a while;  but since the Autumn countries ranging from France to Spain, Germany and Italy are in the deadly crosshairs of Corona.  The United Kingdom faces a  particularity lethal “second strain” of the virus which has prompted Prime Minister Boris     Johnson to practically shut the country down as the outbreaks surge from London.  

Given the lockdown people in England, Scotland and Wales must stay home and only can go out for limited reasons.  

Britain’s National Health Service is strained to the breaking point with new hospital admissions.

In France lockdowns have closed cafes and restaurants, and restricted travel.  The Macron     government has mandated a curfew in major cities to control the outbreaks; the 6 PM to 5 AM curfew has strained nerves and shattered small businesses.    

France has seen numbers surge with expanding daily infection rates despite the lockdown. 

Portugal, which fared quite well during last year's pandemic surge, now faces a particularly deadly

encounter with Covid.  Hospitals in the Lisbon region are filled with Covid patients. 

Europe’s grim numbers are worth noting; the United Kingdom has seen 95,000 deaths,  Italy 84,000, France 72,000 and Germany 50,000.  

Significantly the USA faces a steep fatality rate from Covid; over 400,000 Americans have died in less than a year. Correspondingly the U.S. is facing a relatively mild flu season; largely in part to the COVID-19 safety precautions as well as more than 188 million flu vaccinations.  Both flu and Covid deaths, especially among the elderly population, tend to affect people with multiple underlying health conditions. 

A Vaccine to the rescue?  We have finally have the tool if not silver bullet to stop the Covid spread. America’s much maligned Operation Warp Speed delivered and has fast tracked and helped develop a safe vaccine for the USA.  But many state governments and politicians are    acting like the proverbial Keystone Cops in directing and misdirecting  vaccine distribution.  New York state has stumbled with changing regulations and priorities.

But look at the data.  Vaccine distribution in Israel, the United Kingdom and the USA,  lead the world in the number of vaccine doses administered; as a percent of the population vaccinated, the American rate stands at about three times higher than most other European countries such as Italy and Germany. 

The Biden Administration is pushing for a Herculean effort, backed by signing fifteen Executive Orders,  to deliver one million shots daily in one hundred days.  Will the President’s Pen magically make U.S. Pharma firms produce more vaccine doses to shortly appear in clinics across America ? 

Further afield, Iran’s Ayatollahs say no to the Anglo/American vaccines so they are probably   looking to China for the jab.  Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made unsubstantiated claims that the American and British vaccines were “untrustworthy.”   He decreed,         “importing vaccines made in the US or the UK is prohibited.”  So far 56,000 Iranians have died during the pandemic.  Let’s face it, Iran’s clerical elite will probably get a U.S. vaccine!

Islamic Iran has banned imports of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca/Oxford   vaccines.   

In a strange twist,  Argentina who should know better, has decided to use the Russian Sputnik vaccine!  Argentina became the first country in Latin America to use the Russian shots.  But in a bid to get an additional 15 million vaccines, Argentina’s socialist Fernandez government is     currently in talks with China to procure the Sinovac vaccine.  China’s President Xi Jinping said that his country is “ready to work” with Argentina to boost cooperation. 

But the depth of the global crisis goes beyond borders.  UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

warned,  “We are at a 1945 moment, but this is not 1945.  Today’s war is against a microscopic virus.  Tomorrow’s could be against terrorists in cyberspace. “    

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                                                KING for a Day!

Galette des Rois 

Kings Cake

A traditional pastry celebrating the Epiphany (6 January) the Galettes de Rois are popular in France and Quebec during most of January.  The puff pastry with a layer of delicious frangipane also has versions which are popular in New Orleans.

While the cake is known as as offering to the Three Kings, each pastry holds a small porcelain figurine usually of a religious nature.  The person who finds the prize La Feve becomes King for a day but often gains the obligation to purchase the next cake for the family. 

                 The paper crown can also be worn by the lucky person who discovers the Feve!

                                       The lucky Bean or the Feve!

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                   Merry Christmas!!

HEALTH and Happiness in the New Year!!!

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Happy Thanksgiving--Time for Beaujolais Nouveau

It's that time of the year when the American Feast of Thanksgiving is celebrated with  French Beaujolais Nouveau wine!

The French "new wine"has been a traditional compliment to Thanksgiving Tables and despite the Covid pandemic, this year is really no different.

The 2020 Beaujolais Nouveau comes from the formidable Gamay grape and is a "young" and  indeed uncomplicated edition to the harvest meal, usually of Turkey and cranberries. 

Despite this being 2020, a year which has been filled with disappointment,  chagrin and crisis, the Beaujolais Nouveau is exceptionally good and a fine addition to celebrations hoping for better times. 

A Votre Sante!

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U.S. Not Alone in Widening Global Pandemic

While recent flareups of the Corona virus have been spreading across large parts of the USA, 

Americans are hardly alone in facing the deadly pandemic.  Though virus outbreaks are often presented by mainstream media outlets as a political validation of the contentious mask debate, leading European countries such as France, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom are facing a far more dangerous COVID spike as we enter the cooler Autumn months.  

A one day surge of 30,000 cases in France tipped the scales in an growing pandemic; French President Emmanuel Macron ordered tough curfews on eight cities including Paris where people

must be off the streets between 9 PM and 6 AM. The shutdowns are slated to remain in force 

for at least a month, with about 20 million people directly affected out of the population of 67 million.

This is very serious for the French who already withstood a lockdown between March and May 

where ordinary citizens literally had to have their papers in order and updated daily just to go

out for the necessary baguette and or an afternoon dog walk.  Closing bars and cafe’s is near heresy, but shutting restaurants and placing a curfew on Paris the City of Light at 9 PM borders on ludicrous social engineering.

But there’s more.  Germany’s capital Berlin has suspended an evening curfew from 11PM to 6AM because a court ruling “considers it disproportionate in view of other measures taken to fight the pandemic.”    

German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged residents to stay at home amid a dramatic increase in the number of coronavirus infections in Germany. “We have to do everything we can now to ensure that the virus does not spread uncontrollably — every day counts,” Merkel said in a podcast.  Until now, Germany has had one of the world’s best records in containing COVID. 

   

Crossing the Channel it doesn’t get better. London’s nearly nine million people will be banned from socializing indoors with people outside their households and “support bubbles,” while commuters are urged to avoid public transport. There’s a 10 p.m. curfew for pubs and restaurants in England.  Scotland faces widespread  restrictions.  British Prime Minister Boris Johnson advises coronavirus constraints on gatherings and contacts will have finished by September next year!  COVID cases have more than tripled since September.

This COVID-19 virus is global and lethal.  Few places except for South Korea and Taiwan have handled it very well.  If you view the West European mortality rates, except Sweden, which remained open through the worst of the crisis in the Spring,  many countries actually have a much higher death rate than the USA  proportionate to their populations. 

The mainstream media and big tech platforms downplay or hide this grim reality.  

Though the United States has tragically suffered in excess of 200,000 deaths, many projections and scenarios by Imperial College in London predicted nearly two million fatalities if no action was taken.  This combined with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) too late health hush up from the spread of the Wuhan virus in China assured an accident waiting to happen.  

France’s 67 million people have seen 33,000 deaths which proportionate to the U.S. population of 331 million remains only a slightly lower rate. The U.K. however with 44,000 fatalities from a population of 68 million has a higher mortality rate than the U.S. as does Spain with 34,000 deaths from 47 million people.  A global Vaccine won’t turn the tide at once.

And what about China where it all started?  Only the usual highly sanitized narrative.  

Ironically the WHO has now warned against renewed lockdowns given the extreme economic 

damage they cause.  Governments must choose between safeguarding lives or protecting the economy. 

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German Reunification’s Peaceful Lesson

Germany’s reunification is now history.  It seemed not so long ago that the Berlin Wall had fallen in 1989, Central European countries had regained their sovereignty through the freedom tsunami sweeping Europe, and unimaginably on 3 October 1990, West and East Germany, the front line frontier of a very Cold War had reunified in peace and freedom.  

Almost as in a fairytale the two separate states, the Federal Republic of Germany

(West) and the communist German Democratic Republic (East), had almost magically merged into one nation without violence, with the legal blessing of the WWII Allied powers, and through the political foresight of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.   

Perhaps the most enduring image of divided Germany stood as the Berlin Wall, built in 1961.

The Wall separated free West Berlin controlled by the Americans, British and French from Soviet controlled East Berlin.  The Wall provided a vivid juxtaposition of a divided land; it was designed to keep people inside the worker’s paradise and stop others from trying to flee. 

Indeed between 1949 and 1961 over 2.7 million people fled East Germany for the West.  In Berlin itself over 171 were killed at the Wall while escaping. 

I first visited the divided German capital in the late 1970’s; the once grand cosmopolitan city  remained a stunning tableaux in black and white. While the Wall brutally separated families and neighbors, it equally illuminated the vivid contrast between prosperous West Berlin and the grey, dreary and shoddy East Berlin.  

Though the same people, West and East Germany had fundamentally different state personalities; the Federal Republic was aligned with the West, politically free and with a prosperous turbo-charged market economy.  East Germany was the poor cousin steeped in socialism, and part of the Soviet sphere.  

Complicated economic and social comparisons aside, there’s a novel way to understand the contrast between West and East Germany; their celebrated automobiles.  West Germany was known for its iconic Mercedes-Benz cars and trucks.  East Germany sported the Trabant, a small fiberglass 25 horsepower auto which chugged along belching a blue-grey smoke. Citizens in  West Germany’s consumer society had access to the Mercedes line and it was not uncommon to own one.  In the East there was a multi-year waiting list to buy a treasured Trabi—which came in the dazzling colors of white, penicillin green and black.  Enough said!

 

In June 1987, President Ronald Reagan, while visiting Berlin and speaking at the Brandenburg Gate demanded, “Mr. Gorbachev Tear down this Wall.”  Reagan’s comments touched off a     cascade of shock, criticism, and condescension and from a political class who viewed the      president’s call as an incendiary challenge to an accepted status quo; the Wall. Elites cringed.

But then came the unexpected Freedom Tsunami of Autumn 1989 when Central Europe changed. 

By 1990, the geopolitical stars were aligned perfectly as the four Allied powers, the victors over Naziism in WWII,  acted as cautious midwives to the creation of a reunited Germany.  

Though economically costly, Kohl’s political choice for unity was the right one.  But despite the progress, there’s still political angst among the 17 million Easterners; some speak of a psychological divide between East and West Germany.

Emily Haber, Germany’s  Ambassador to the United States stresses, “The trust and friendship of our neighbors and allies, first and foremost the U.S., helped bring about this unique success    story.  We will never forget America’s support. Thirty years later, we celebrate that historic day and say, ‘Danke!’ to the American people.”

Reunification’s success was anchored in close and enduring Transatlantic ties; let’s refocus on renewing those vital links of friendship.

 

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COVID Crisis Clouds United Nations Assembly

Since March the world has been battered by the Covid-19 virus.  Nearly a million people have died and many more been sickened by this “invisible enemy.”  From its origins in China, through its spread into Europe, the United States and Latin America, the virus has ravished societies and rocked the social bedrock of countries round the world.

The annual UN General Assembly, celebrating its 75th anniversary,  has been forced to meet virtually, with online video sessions replacing the diplomatic pomp and pageantry of years past.  

“In a world turned upside down, this General Assembly Hall is among the strangest sights of all,” lamented UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.  

Here are a few of the more interesting speeches.

Britain’s bombastic Prime Minister Boris Johnson to liven up what’s largely been a droning video debate;  “Never in the history of our species, not since the almighty felled the tower of babel,  has the human race been so obsessed with one single topic of conversation…  COVID-19, coronavirus, has united humanity as never before.”

Boris Johnson then warned, “the crisis has also been an extraordinary force for division. We have all been up against the same enemy. The same tiny opponent threatening everyone in much the same way, but members of the UN have still waged 193 separate campaigns, as if every country somehow contains a different species of human being.”

He counseled, “After nine months of fighting COVID-19, the very notion of the international community looks, frankly, pretty tattered. And we know that we simply can’t continue in this way.” That is Unless we get our act together. Unless we unite and turn our fire against our   common foe, we know that everyone will lose.”  

Boris Johnson pledged the United Kingdom’s massive additional funding for the controversial World Health Organization as well as to global vaccine research and distribution efforts. 

Interestingly earlier in the year Prime Minister Johnson was himself hospitalized for having   contracted the Corona virus.  Moreover even today the UK has a proportionally higher Corona virus fatality rate than the United States.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered some controversy; “Over the last 8 to 9 months, the whole world has been battling the pandemic of the Coronavirus. Where is the United Nations in this joint  fight against the pandemic? Where is its effective response?”

He added “Reform in the responses, in the processes, and in the very character of the United Nations is the need of the hour.”

Prime Minister Modi then recited a long litany of India’s historic contributions to the UN, but then asked rhetorically why India has not been awarded a permanent seat on the powerful fifteen  member Security Council?  

He said,  “the international community today is faced with a very important question: Whether the character of the institution, constituted in the prevailing circumstances of 1945, is relevant even today?”

India has been devastated by the virus; with almost six million cases, nearly 100,000 people have died.   

Charles Michel of the European Union (EU) made an interesting observation “I have often been asked a question:  In the new rivalry between the United States and China, which side is the European Union on?”

He stated, “My answer is the following...We are deeply connected with the United States. We share ideals, values and a mutual affection that have been strengthened through the trials of history. They remain embodied today in a vital transatlantic alliance.” 

Michel added, “We do not share the values on which the political and economic system in China is based. And we will not stop promoting respect for universal human rights. Including those of minorities such as the Uighurs or in Hong Kong.”

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was one of the few leaders to courageously criticize the WHO; “Unfortunately, and I say it with regret, the response we have seen by the World Health Organization has failed to exercise global health leadership. It did not act resolutely after the pandemic outbreak in Wuhan, China, and had a very limited success – to put it softly – in helping countries prevent, protect against, and respond to disease events.” 

 

Contrary to past Assembly sessions speakers did not cite the political laundry list of world crises; Korea was barely mentioned,  there were ritualistic mentions of  the Two State solution for Israel and Palestine, and few countries such as the USA, cited human rights in Cuba and Venezuela.    

The Covid crisis has clouded the enthusiasm from this year’s anniversary General Assembly.  

But it’s oft darkest before the dawn.