Caedmon to Audible: From Spoken-Word LPs to Audio Book Bonanza

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Creative Writing, Leisure activities, Literary & Linguistics, Media & Communications, Memorabilia, Old technology, Popular Culture

The “Groundhog Day” existence of coronavirus, with people ‘sentenced’ to indeterminable periods of isolation and lockdown inside four square walls, has been a boon to the pursuit of leisure activities※. Social media platforms have gone “gang-busters” – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Zoom, and Snapchat and TikTok (for the Gen-Zs) among others. Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Stan, ditto. In this year like no other, Audible tell us that audio books are more popular than ever – a trend promoted undoubtedly by Audible’s own deft marketing (eg, during Covid-19 they are streaming a selection of children’s stories free to the public). The uptake of Borrow Box loan activity in 2020 underscores this assertion.

Cohen & Roney 1952: taking the 1st steps for audio booksellers (Photo: Lib of Congress Blogs)

Audio books (ABs) in one form or another have been around a long time, arguably the pioneer in the area of spoken-word records was Caedmon Records, the first to hit the mark with a mainstream audience. The Caedmon company evolved out of the initiatives in 1952 of two 22-year-old female college graduates (Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney) in the US to record a poetry reading by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The popularity of the poetry album which included A Child’s Christmas in Wales laid the groundwork for today’s AB industry. The development of technology assisted the progression of “spoken books”… from the first LPs (Long-playing records), emerging in the 1930s, which gave way to tape cassettes in the 1960s and 70s, which in turn lead later still to compact discs [‘Caedmon Records and Audiobooks, (HarperCollins), www.200.hc.com].

My own personal history as a consumer of spoken-word records begins with the aforementioned Caedmon, circa 1977. In the mid-Seventies I had watched several films in a series of commercial releases under the title “American Film Theatre”, film adaptations of a number of well-known plays…the series which utilised Lord Olivier as its promotional face included Galileo (Brecht), Rhinoceros (Ionesco), Luther (Osborne), The Homecoming (Pinter) and The Iceman Cometh (O’Neill).

At the time I came across vinyl 78s of two of the plays-to-films in the series—Butley (Simon Gray) and A Delicate Balance (Edward Albee)—in a tiny spoken-word section of a second-hand record shop. Snapping them up, this marked my first foray into the (at that time) still embryonic world of collecting ABs.

Audio books then were pretty much unknown in retail record departments and shops… major book retailers were yet to cotton on to the potentiality of thus broadening the market for their products, and online goliaths like Amazon were yet to come into existence. I remember that I got my first spoken-word cassette by (pre-online) mail order from the Royal Blind Society in 1978. The RBS had more incentive than anyone else to embrace “talking books”⋓, an innovation which opened up a whole new world of leisure for the visually-impaired. The first (double cassette) AB that I purchased was a BBC recording of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

Since that time the audio book industry has exploded with heavyweights like Hachette Audio, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster, all with significant “skin in the game”. Lording over all these competitors is Audible (Amazon), unchallenged as the dominant market leader. Even before the pandemic the global AB market was valued at US$2.67 Bn in 2019 (wwwgrandviewresearchcom/]. The coronavirus is sending that worldwide sales trajectory even higher (US audio unit sales are up 16% dwarfing the book market growth of the industry as a whole (wwwthenewpublishingstandardcom/)).

The success of audio books has been welcomed by the book industry as a positive addition (cf. the advent of Kindle and e-books which raised fears of ‘cannibalisation’ of the main product)⊞. The takeaway from the AB phenomena is that the aural experience is a different one, and that ABs (according to a Deloitte report) tend to attract a younger demographic that is less inclined to read print books [‘A word in your ear…why the rise of audiobooks is a story worth celebrating’, (Alex Preston), The Guardian, 02-Aug-2020, www.theguardian.com].


The versatility of audio books is behind its blossoming into an integral part of the literature landscape for ‘readers’. ABs can be integrated easily into one’s life in all manner of ways that are not confined to a sedentary or stationary state – while exercising, walking, jogging, cycling, in the gym, while cooking, doing housework, driving a car, commuting, etc [‘Audiobooks: The rise and rise of the books you don’t read’, (Clare Thorp), BBC, 06-Jan-2020, www.bbc.com].

For many buyers of audio books a factor in choosing a title is the reader itself. Having “A-list talent” and the “dulcet tones of a familiar voice” as reader certainly can add value to the product✦, but big names only work if they have a genuine connexion with the material (Thorp). Some ABs work better when the author doubles as reader, this particularly applies to memoirs and non-fiction titles. Having this can convey to the listener a more authentic experience of the subject’s journey. For myself, the AB experience that I most enjoyed was John Lithgow’s brilliant reading of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Character actor Lithgow brought such an energy to the reading, greatly enhancing the flavour and tone of Wolfe’s biting satire on greed and status in NYC (in marked contrast to the disappointing Tom Hanks movie version), probably my all-time favourite AB.

Another memorable audio book collection I would place high on my AB order of merit are the recordings of Samuel Pepys’ Diaries (readings by Kenneth Branagh and a BBC dramatisation). From both sets of recordings I got a real “living history” insight into Pepys’ thought processes and compromised behaviour—flaws and virtues, so redolent of that of the modern bureaucrat—and of the everyday life of an event-filled London in late Stuart Britain.

One of the reasons I took to audio books is that it offered me a way into critically acclaimed works of fiction that in print form I had found Sphinx-like and impenetrable. Back in the 1970s I made several attempts at reading the 754 abstruse and puzzling pages of Joyce’s Ulysses before raising the white flag in defeat. Ulysses’ emergence in the AB format in the, must be late Eighties/early Nineties (albeit in an abridged four-CD form) was the key I needed to unlock the stylistic labyrinth of Joyce’s prose. ABs also let me get a handle on that other Irish author of literary complexity Flann O’Brien, and his convoluted metafiction maze The Third Policeman.

FN: Cædmon
Caedmon, the name chosen by Cohen and Roney for their revolutionary business enterprise, was the name of the first known English poet (flourished late Seventh century AD), a Northumbrian cowherd turned exponent of Old English (Anglo-Saxon) verse poetry.

——————-——————-——————-—————

※ another pastime, gaining impetus in the lockdown and perhaps capturing the zeitgeist of 2020 is doomscrolling – the social media practice of continuing to read long streams of news feeds which are disheartening in content

⋓ the term as I recall more in currency at the time than audio books

⊞ print books managed to repulse the challenge from e-books in part due to pricing strategies which disincentivised e-book purchasing [Amazon’s Audiobook Boom’, (Alex Shepard), The New Republic, O3-Jul-2018, www.newrepublic.com]

✦ the rise of ABs has provided a source of peripheral work for some actors, a very welcome and in some cases lucrative sideline

Courting Controversy in Coronavirus Country: Belgium and El Salvador

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Comparative politics, Media & Communications, Public health,, Science and society

As countries try to deal with an epidemic that is novel to the world of public health, with no tried-and-true templates to follow, there have been various quite differing approaches to the COVID-19 crisis. Some of these approaches have inevitably roamed into the realm of the controversial and polemical, polarising people at home and abroad. In previous blogs 7dayadventurer.com has sketched the go-it-alone path adopted by Sweden✱,〘Two Antithetical Approaches to the COVID-19 Crisis: A Controversial Outlier Versus a a Low-key Over-achiever (10-May-2020)〙and the denialist response of President Bolsonaro to the epidemic in Brazil〘Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding? (02-Apr-2020)  〙. 

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Belgium’s unenviable record – with an asterisk
This blog turns the spotlight elsewhere, on to an unlikely duo, two vastly dissimilar countries whose strategies towards the pandemic have proved controversial, each in it’s own way. Belgium, a small European state, has surprised and shocked many observers by its prominence on the table of world’s worst affected countries. The country has recorded 815 deaths per million of population (as at the 1st of June), easily the worst per capita toll in “First World” Europe (next closest Spain, 580/one million). Although Belgium has some distinguishable factors which contribute it its fatality rate—the country and especially the capital Brussels is the sixth-most dense in Europe, and Brussels has a very international and mobile population, a high number of Belgians reside in nursing homes (accounting for more than half of the disease’s victims)✬—there’s another (statistical) factor that goes a good way to explaining why there has been 9,580 recorded victims of the disease⊡. Belgium counts both the deaths confirmed as resulting from coronavirus and the deaths which are suspected to have been caused by the disease (most countries do not include this second category in their official COVID-19 counts)✪. (“Is Belgium the world’s deadliest COVID-19 country or just the most honest?’, (Bevan Shields), Sydney Morning Herald,  01-Jun-2020,  www.smh.com.au).

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🔺 Belgians returning home to a coronavirus-hit country

In defence of over-counting
Belgian virologist Prof Steven Van Gucht has deflected criticism of both Belgium’s numbers and its method of calculating corona casualties, commending Belgium for its honesty in selecting the more inclusive determination of the death toll. Van Gucht has argued that “public health shouldn’t be a political game or a contest on who is doing better than someone else”, adding that other governments not being honest with the public about the true scale of their outbreaks will be caught out on it later. Not everyone in Belgium applauds such transparency and honesty with the corona data, some within the kingdom’s business leadership have expressed alarm than the methodology used to ‘inflate’ mortality and morbidity numbers may have a deterrent effect on tourists returning to Belgium once the economy reopens (Shields).
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(Source: www.graphicmaps.com/)

El Salvador’s tough stand on lockdown transgressors part of a worrying authoritarian trend?
Pre-existing conditions in the Central American country of El Salvador have dictated the government approach taken to coronavirus. El Salvador’s high incidence of both gang activity and homicide prompted president Nayib Bukele (at 38 youthful and very social media savvy, eg, >1.9 M Twitter followers) to act hard and fast. Bukele’s government took a preemptive approach to the outbreak, schools and colleges were suspended and a state of emergence declared before the country had recorded its first confirmed case of the virus. Borders were closed, public gatherings in excess of 500 people banned, anyone caught driving cars without a sanctioned reason were detained at confinement centres for a 30-day period. Quarantine-breakers have been dealt with, summarily and harshly. Towns in El Salvador deemed to not be complying with the president’s strict lockdown orders have been cordoned off by the police, barring public egress [‘Savior or Strongman? El Salvador’s millennial president defies courts and Congress on coronavirus response’, (Patrick Oppman), CNN, 21-May-2020, www.edition.cnn.com].

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(Source: El Salvador Presidency via Reuters)

The new Salvadoran president has gone particularly hard on the country’s street gangs, the maras, who he fears would take advantage of the state of emergency to increase their criminal business activities when the security forces were busy policing the lockdown measures. Most controversial has been Bukele’s treatment of gang prisoners during the crisis –  shockingly dehumanising images have emerged of large numbers of half-naked convicts shackled and huddled together in tight-knit formation (with zilch regard for social distancing), resembling a great amorphous mass of  “human cargo” [’El Salvador’s president accused of using coronavirus to bolster autocratic agenda’, (Patrick J Mc Donnell & Alexander Renderos), Los Angeles Times, 01-May-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].

Recently Bukele has copped a lot of flak for the way he’s handled the crisis, including from labour organisations decrying the draconian quarantine measures as abuses of human rights. The legality of his actions has been questioned as has the increasing militarisation of the regime [‘One Year After Taking Charge, Nayib Bukele Faces Severe Criticism for Handling of COVID-19′, (Zoe PC/ Tanya Wadhwa), News Click, 03-Jun-2020, www.newsclick.in/].

El Salvador’s ‘hip’ president: taking a selfie before his speech at the UN 🔻

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Shades of  the White House
As an outsider—both as the son of an immigrant family from the Middle East and from a minor centre-right party which sits outside the political establishment traditionally dominated by the two main parties in El Salvador)—the president has deliberately attempted to work outside the mainstream including the National Assembly (NA) to achieve his aims. And he’s not adverse to employing military muscle to intimidate opponents⌽ while also reaching out to El Salvador’s impoverished with cash and food handouts (to buttress his personal popularity with the social base). Political opponents in the NA have accused Bukele of using the pandemic to consolidate an authoritarian regime, and of seeking to violate the national constitution (Oppman). The similarities seemingly extend to shared personal traits. President Bukele has disclosed his prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine, while referencing Trump’s use and endorsement of the drug. The El Salvador authorities have managed to hold the death toll thus far to 53 (06-Jun-2020) at the cost of drastic restrictions on individual liberties.


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✱ Sweden‘s top epidemiologist has now conceded the government’s laissez-faire approach was seriously flawed – with a status quo of 43 fatalities per 100,000 people and Sweden finding its borders with its Scandinavian neighbours remaining firmly closed [‘Top epidemiologist admits he got Sweden’s COVID-19 strategy wrong’, (Bloomberg), National Post, 03-Jun-2020, www.nationalpost.com]
⊡ as at  06-Jun-2020
✬ some countries simply don’t count deaths occurring in nursing homes in their COVID-19 tallies, the UK only belatedly included them later in the crisis
✪ if Belgium applied the same criteria as most countries the recorded number of deaths by COVID-19 would be around half of what it is
⌽ such as deploying the army inside the Legislative Assembly as ‘bouncers’ [‘Nayib Bukele’s military stunt raises alarming memories in El Salvador’, (David Agren), The Guardian, 16-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]

International Conference on the Great Manchurian Plague: A Pioneering Blueprint for Public Health Advances and Safeguards

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
International Relations, Medical history, Public health,, Regional History

Once the authorities in Manchuria had secured a firm handle on the plague outbreak in Heilongjiang, Kirin and Fengtian provinces by February 1911, little time was wasted calling for a conference of international medical specialists to enquire into all aspects of the epidemic and promote the advancement of future disease control. Scientists including disease specialists from many countries were invited to attend the location chosen for the conference, Mukden (Shenyang), which was one of the cities in North-East China hardest hit by the pneumonic epidemic.

B1888135-B036-4C07-9615-30CB41114CBEDespite the pressingly urgent need to canvas expert international input into the dire health catastrophe, China must have had some reservations about what it was doing. Both Russia and Japan with undisguised Manchurian ambitions already held firm footholds in N.E. China (control over railway lines, ports, territorial concessions, etc), plus other Western powers controlled Chinese treaty ports further south. But with no politicians taking part in the conference and all attendees pledging that it’s focus was to be on scientific investigation and not about imposing any further external controls on China, the central government pushed on with it [‘In 1911, another epidemic swept through China. That time, the world came together’, (Paul French), CNN, 19-Apr-2020, www.cnn.com]. Dr Wu Lien-teh, the “plague fighter-general” of Harbin, was appointed conference chairperson. There were a few “nationalistic frictions” with the Japanese mainly resulting from some anti-Chinese remarks injudiciously made by the Japanese delegate, Professor Kitasato, before leaving Tokyo for the conference, but this did not impede the cohesion of the conference  [Eli Chernin (1989). “Richard Pearson Strong and the Manchurian Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague, 1910—1911” (PDF). Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. 44(3): 296–319. doi:101093/jhmas/44.3.296. PMID 2671146].

🔻 Safety precautions at Harbin plague site

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A congress of international disease experts
The International Plague Conference (IPC) was a ground-breaking series of ‘firsts’, the first international scientific symposium held in China, the first time in modern history of a multi-nation approach focusing on disease control. The conference also anticipated the purpose of later world bodies dedicated to international health maintenance, the League of Nations’ Health Organisation (LNHO), established in 1923, and  it’s successor, the UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO), created after the Second World War.

3A6D176E-BB45-4C08-B823-02421AA93931Scientists from ten countries joined host China at the Plague Conference in the repurposed Shao Ho Yien palace – the US, UK, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Netherlands and Mexico, an indication of how seriously the international medical community took the Manchurian outbreak and its implications. The delegates were drawn from several relevant and related fields including epidemiologists, virologists, bacteriologists, tropical medicine specialists and illness consultants.

🔻 Contemporary coverage of the conference in ‘The Lancet’

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The conference, getting into the “nitty-gritty’ 
High on the conference’s agenda was the question of aetiology, what were the Great Manchurian Plague’s causal factors? American delegate Richard P Strong, who arrived prior to the conference, undertook pathological experimentation which verified the infectious role played by tarbagan marmots in the plague (which he published in the Philippine Journal of Science, 1912). The experts had to sift through a raft of unhelpful faux-scientific beliefs and assumptions to get to “the scientific root of the bacteria”, again underlining the IPC’s emphasis on science and medicine. Containment was another key issue at the conference. The discussion was around what worked best in the plague? Measures like ‘blanket’ quarantines, travel bans, face masks and ad hoc plague hospitals (swiftly assembled to isolate the infected from the healthy), all got a big tick…an endorsement of Dr Wu Lien-teh’s positive measures in the war against the pneumonic epidemic, deemed by the conference delegates as essential tools in the fight against future outbreaks and waves of plague (French).

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🔺 The admirable Dr Wu

Seeds of a nationwide public health service 
One of the conference’s finest and far-reaching achievements was to establish the Manchurian Plague Prevention Service (under the helm of Dr Wu). The MPPS and Wu identified medical education as the “holy grail”, the service’s role was to  disseminate materials to the public, promote the efficacy of sanitary conditions and health in the community, and overall playing a leading role in adopting Western medicine (Xīyào) and methods of disease control in China. MPPS provided the model for a future Chinese national health service (French).

The follow-up to the three-and-a-half week International Plague Conference put Chinese medicine on the path to modernisation. Many of the country’s medical advances began here …. the IPC laid down a blueprint for handling future plagues which included the use of autopsies,  instructional dissection and cremation, all of which became institutionalised practice afterwards (Chernin).

Medicine and health before politics
The Mukden IPC in April 1911, conducted in an atmosphere free of politicising, demonstrated the cooperative humanitarian efforts of a group of medical professionals…when left to it by the politicians, they showed single-minded unity of purpose, what could be achieved, collectively and internationally, to counter the danger of a disease with immediate and future global ramifications for public health. I need not emphasise the stark contrast with the management of the world’s current pandemic in which some of the major powers, distracted from the only really important priority, are happy to engage in a ”political blame game” over the coronavirus‘ origins, instead of co-operating with each other to meet a pernicious and deadly health risk to the planet head-on and in unison.
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Endnote: Lessening future shock
The gains in medicine and public health protection coming out of the conference were soon put to use in China. Disease re-emerged in the 1919 malaria epidemic and the 1921 plague (again in Harbin) which was to test China’s embryonic national quarantine system. Dr Wu again took charge to guide China through these medical crises. The improvements in public health since 1911, it is estimated, reduced casualties in the second outbreak of pneumatic plague by four-fifths [‘Portraits of a plague: the 19th-century pandemic that killed 12 million people’, History Extra, 21-Jul-2015, www.historyextra.com].

Covid/Ovid 2020: Crisis (Mis)Management – How the World’s Leaders are Responding?

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Media & Communications, Medical history, Natural Environment, Politics

Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.

Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank & PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!

🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummy for the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)

Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).

(Photo: AP)

China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].

(Photo: AP)

Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].

Life on Planet Trump 
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].

(Photo: CBS News)

Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.

Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].

(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The “Trump of the Tropics” 
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.

When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].

🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?

Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].

🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast

Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].

Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights? 
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].

🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)

 

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❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)