Welcome to the Wednesday edition of the self-isolated socially distant quarantined curfewed sheltered-in-place Mark Steyn Show with an audio Coronacopia of news and comment, but a few other diversions, including British bobbies, Japanese comedians, Congolese strongmen, and, in lieu of this year's Covid-canceled Eurovision Song Contest, a look back to its glory days with Dana ...and Sinéad.
If you like this format, Steyn may do more. But, if you don't, we shall speak no more about it. For now, simply click above to listen. And, if you're a Mark Steyn Club member and you'd like to submit a question for Mark to address on his next show, please leave it in the comments below. Do stay on topic - and no URLS, please, as they wreak havoc with our page formating.
The Mark Steyn Show is made with the support of members of The Mark Steyn Club. As Mark always says, Club membership isn't for everyone, but it if you're interested you can find more information here.
Steyn will return later this evening with Part Twelve of A Journal of the Plague Year.
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73 Member Comments
Mark, not to complain or disparage in any way, and not sure who controls your audio mixer and even whether you have the necessary equipment, but if I may make a suggestion, it would be this. Audio compression. Dynamic range is volume range from soft to crescendo. An audio compressor will compress the dynamic range so the output level is more constant. What am I thinking, you've been in a recording studio, recorded albums, very high-end engineering, possibly the significant volume fluctuations are because you are stuck at home with limited equipment.
So sorry, pay no attention.
I love this format. How delightful to hear your turn of phrase. You certainly have the gift of the gab.
Are you old enough to remember the night that Dana won ?
Keep up the good work !
Hi Mark,
50 years ago before I emigrated to Canada I watched Dana win The Eurovision.
Soon after I saw her perform In Dingle Co. Kerry..
Loved you comments on the polices or should I say The Peelers.
In Ireland we had The RIC much maligned today who were mostly Catholic and maintained order in Ireland.
They were decent people and wise when on the beat.
Thomas Crean from Dingle who went with Shackelton had at least one brother in the RIC and was killed during The Troubles.
Are you old enough to remember the night Dana won.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Mark and co.
I have been watching the Bat Flu for months. The first thing is the WHO is a joke and a corrupt one at that.
We should of taken notice of Taiwan said and done. They know the CCP better than anyone else in the world.
An early stat I seen was 15 per 100,000. Which is less than a flu. Read a Toby Young article in DT today. A US scientist says 50 per 100,000. These were the people with a weaker immune system and should of been protected. Then looking into that, every ward and care home would have to be as clean as an operating theatre. I think the whole world has just relearned herd immunity is the only way. Also how stupid and evil the CCP are. Also I think it was accidentally released from one of their labs. Just like 'foot and mouth' leak from Porton Down in UK.
Mark, from the CDC, the U.S. has 2.8 million deaths per year. From 2017 data, top causes are heart disease 650K, cancer 600K, chronic lower respiratory 160K; just a few notches down we have diabetes at 84K. Summing such "underlying" conditions attributed to high COVID mortality translates to 1.5 million deaths or 125K deaths per month. Thus far, we've lost 6K to COVID-19. How many of these deaths might have occurred in any case in 2020?
Some perspective is needed. We are shutting down the economy to prevent thousands of deaths mostly within a subset of the population that typically sees hundreds of thousands of deaths.
In 2017, a total 56K perished due to pneumonia & influenza. Rarely does this hit the nightly news.
If there was a French-built Level 4 Bio-containment lab, replete with SARS MERS and whatever viruses, in Taipei, and if the Chinese Plague has escaped thence, the Chinese and their lickspittle lackeys at CNN et al would be screaming #TaipeiVirus, #TaiwanVirus, and accusing the USA of complicity. Ah. Halfway there.
We would not be hearing of "racist!" - we would be invited to hand Taiwan over to the pure Nazis in Peking.
I had never heard "All Kinds Of Everything" before. When I listened I kept thinking about "My Favorite Things" from The Sound Of Music. Had the same kind of bounce to it. Thank you Mark for an outstanding episode of your show. Keep 'em comin' please!
I never heard it before either, Robert. I can't imagine how long I would've remained so oblivious to such a wide variety of songs and artists had I never discovered this Mark Steyn fellow and this incredible online club. You may not know what you've got 'til it's gone ( hiya, Joni Mitchell), but you sure know what you were missing once you hear more!
I agree Fran. The wide range of subjects presented on this website is tremendous especially the music. Mark's essays on musical topics bring back memories of my childhood when I loved listening to the music of my parents' generation. I never dreamed one could carve a career out of providing retrospectives of it. I missed my opportunity.
Same here, Robert! I've never gotten into music from my parents' era but I remembered little things about my dad just through the music portion of Mark's offerings. My dad was always singing around the house and when he took me places in his old car. Mark reviews songs that at first I don't recognize but then they become more and more familiar. Just like the Avalon song that Carol Welsman recently recorded. My dad rented a cottage down in Avalon, NJ on the bay one summer and as soon as I heard that song, I could almost hear my dad singing to mom while we three were there together. He looked a little like Bogart, and maybe he was a little handsomer, too. He was a happy man considering his tough life. To think it's the music that brings back the memories of him is fortunate because I don't have a lot of photos of him.
All this talk of terrible policemen reminded me of a passage in Natsume Soseki's "Kusamakura" where the protagonist, a nameless artist, has left Tokyo because he could no longer bear the police sniffing about as if you were always a criminal. When I was looking up the passage I found that the more modern translation is more explicit, here is an excerpt of his conversation with a priest:
"You look as if you wander about a lot. Now, is that in order to paint?"
"Yes. I take along the equipment when I go walking, but I don't mind if I don't actually paint any picture."
"Ah, so it's only half-serious, then?"
"Yes, you could say that. I hate submitting myself to all that fart counting, you see."
Even a Zen practitioner such as the abbot is apparently at a loss to comprehend this expression. "What do you mean by 'fart counting'?"
"If you live in Tokyo for a long time, you get your farts counted."
"How so?"
I laugh. "It wouldn't be so bad if it was just counting, but then they go on to analyze your farts, and measure your a**-hole to see if it's square or triangular, and so on."
"Ah, you're talking about hygiene, are you?"
"Not hygiene, no. I'm talking about detectives."
"Detectives? So it's the police, is it? Now, what's the purpose of policemen, eh? Do we really have to have them?"
"No, artists certainly have no need of them."
"Nor do I. I've never had any cause to bother one."
"I'm sure not."
"Still, I don't care if the police want to go counting farts. So what? They can't do a thing to you, after all, unless you've done something wrong."
"It's dreadful just to think something might be done to you on account of a simple fart, though."
I believe Mr. Ken Shimura would have approved. :)
I think we now know just what finished off the dinosaurs...the Wuhan flu...and, yes, even then China was exporting killer viruses.
When this pandemic is over, I do wonder if Trump will seek reparations from China and the WHO. It would be even better if he presents such a resolution in the U.N.
I cannot comprehend how foreign manufacturing in China does not relocate to nations with cheaper labor and less risk of health outbreak. In the last few years, Vietnam has been seeing a surge of manufacturing plants.
China does what China wants to do. And China doesn't do what China doesn't want to do. I don't think we should even bring up the subject of reparations with China. If we do, we will look even more wimpish than we do now after they give us the finger. Instead, I would like for the United States to take to heart exactly what kind of regime China has and how they operate. On a previous Mark's Mailbox, Mark mentioned how China's neighbors like Singapore, Taiwan and Japan well know their neighbor and they seemed to be much better prepared for something like this than the rest of the world. We should get to know their neighbor as well as they do. We need to go on a 100 year marathon of our own with the stated goal that today's China will not exist in current form generations from now. It will be the new cold war. Which brings to mind....does anyone think the old Soviet Union would have considered doing such a thing during that cold war as China has done today? Our response would have been much different then than it is toward China today. In retrospect we won nothing when that cold war ended in the 90's. We are facing a more potent foe and from a weaker position. Sad. Even worse, I doubt anything will ever be done about it. Can you see McConnell, Pelosi, Schumer, Grassley, Feinstein, Graham or anyone else in a position of power and authority spearheading such a thing? Neither do I. There's no money in it for them.
Fair point about reparations. I don't want sound like a member of the Squad.
There just needs to be someway for the Chinese government to pay.
There's no question the ChiComs are responsible and should pay out reparations. But we do have things in the West that the Chinese dictatorship values. We could begin by expelling Chinese nationals from our colleges and universities. We can begin a campaign to expel China from the G20. We can begin to set the stage in the U.S. to revitalize our manufacturing capabilities and start making our own crap here. We can ramp up our military presence by further partnering with our current allies in the Pacific region. We can begin to retaliate against North Korea whenever they launch a rocket. We can suspend diplomatic relations with them and demand their expulsion from the UN Security Council. There are a thousand needles we can poke that putrid regime with to begin to put them in their place. Something like this doesn't succeed overnight. It has to be a persistent, long term effort. Short of military conflict it's the best way to handle this. The Cold War with the Soviets took several decades to win. We can do likewise with Red China.
On the increasingly trivial, intrusive, and less soft tyranny of the local constabulary front, the chief of police in Seattle managed to take time out from her busy schedule of releasing "non-violent" felons back into the local population to make a public service announcement video encouraging residents to call 911 if they overhear hate speech and report the offender.
Love that you are doing more daily audio content.
Well done and very enjoyable
Mark: the breadth and depth of your content leave me breathless...breadthless. Totally love your show and the content you open my Yankee eyes to. Keep up the good work. Going to share some gift memberships to good friends for this period of whoa or so.
Additional comment for some possible future narrative for you: OAC's white clad arm waving congressional floor rant has to have its choreographic roots in some previous historical tyrant's rant; she had to be copying someone; but who? Nakita Krucheav (so?)? Castro? Somebody; would be an enlightening segment on TC, no?
I generally prefer reading to viewing/listening - almost never look at video. But because of your voice and the music - I am all in for this.
By the way, how could we/you characterize your audience: Anglo; Devoted to the Western Tradition; Freedom-loving; Government skeptic/preferring localized power as much as feasible; and despite all, resolutely optimistic.
We could use a new generic term for this community which spans countries, peoples, and archaic political definitions. Suggestions please.
Apocalyptic epicureans?
Memories, memories......
(No links included, as per request)
I actually remember Dana singing AKoE back in 1970.
Have you thought of putting on her Lady of Knock?
I was just getting interested in languages then, and I remember thinking it was a pity she wasn't actually singing in Irish.
Try Mo Chailin Rua ... I'm sure you'll all approve.
Lulu came first equal in the 1969 contest with Boom bang a bang. Massiel was the1968 winner with La La La.
Did you notice Lenny Kuhr, one of the joint 1969 winners (Holland) presented the prize to Dana? Her De Troubadour is worth a mention as well.
And in the early 70's Monty Python had Chairman Mao reviving the memory of Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson's Sing, Little Birdie, Sing.
Regarding coppers, Peter Simple once suggested that a British version of Communism might be even worse than the Soviet version. Are we seeing the first steps on that trajectory?
Mark. Just a note that they did charge the Hamilton drug dealer with drug offenses. Apparently,not all coppers are wankers.
'Wanker-Coppers' - Word of the year!
I love this format, Mark. Switch on at 5 o'clock, make large gin and tonic, start making supper - good time had by all.
Hi Mark - FWIW, I'm also a "founding member" of ye olde club.
I'd very much like to be included in the chorus of the folks who very much enjoy these audio forays. To hear your wit and subtle analytical mastery of recent events is one of the very few "bright spots" in these otherwise dark quarantined times.
Most respectively,
Philip Mason
Mark, don't limit yourself to Brit Wanker Coppers. Our Aussie Wanker Coppers are not to be denied. We have cop cars, with blue lights flashing, bouncing across public parks and threatening to run over sunbathers unless they move on. It's like a scene out of every Bruce Willis movie. And young mothers, breast feeding their babies in the sun with barely a soul in cooee are being told to to get back to their stuffy apartments or risk arrest.
It's madness, isn't it? Yesterday, a mother out walking in a safe and secluded area in Sydney (with baby in stroller) was approached by uniformed police, asked about the purpose of her activity, and told that her pace was more consistent with "dawdling" (- not exercise)! That's a first hand account.
The light at the end of the tunnel is very faint, that's for sure. A glimpse of the long road to a return to social proximity - including economic activity - after the (initial) peak has subsided in affected regions of the world: "National coronavirus response: A road map to reopening" - American Enterprise Institute. March 29th, 2020.
PS. You forgot to mention your state's "ban on lovers"!
The hitherto law-abiding citizen who described the police encounter to me said she got off with a "warning" re the up-to-$11,000 fine that would otherwise apply in the absence of a "reasonable excuse". She'll have to walk more briskly, next time.
Toby Young has written, "Has the [British] government overreacted to the Coronavirus Crisis?"
Essentially, his answer is "Yes," but that from someone himself infected with the virus and with no idea whether he will pull through.
It's at thecritic.co.uk, which, I should point out, also hosts significantly differing views.
I'm in S.A. Kate. It was Victoria who tried to ban luurve.
If nothing else this shows how quickly gun toting police will turn on an unarmed populace and thoughtlessly enforce the most ridiculous commands from on high. No wonder so many Yanks feel they need to own a gun as a defense against a future out-of-control government.
Oops- I was confusing your State-of-Origin with that of Andrew Vaccaro, David.
This instinct - to wield power over others - has been given full licence, and we're seeing a level of "anarcho-tyranny" we couldn't have imagined a fortnight ago. (Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales,
Number 65, 30 March 2020 makes for interesting reading.)
It really is the end of the world as we know it!
Thanks. I have to read the article yet, but I've seen one interpretation to the effect that TY implicitly supports a Covid "cull" of those who are considered a burden on the NHS. I think our societies will be less well disposed towards the elderly and those with disabilities after this event. There are strong signs of it already. It's the same reason that "medically-assisted suicide" is promoted. Comment to be continued...
It's more a question of whether the response to this virus justifies wrecking economies everywhere, with the consequent loss of life that that must entail. Young may or may not have his sums right, but he is arguing that there has, ultimately, to be a balance between our reaction to the China virus and the effects on everyday life from that reaction.
While his article is controversial, I didn't read it as supporting a "cull" of the old, or of the long-term sick, either now, or in perpetuity.
Point taken. But it looks like those who were indifferent to Covid deaths in other countries - "it's mainly old people at the mercy of socialised healthcare" - are now (ostensibly) concerned by suicides when the economy takes a massive hit.
Mark: Thank you so much for your daily audio updates, including musical tributes at the end. Special thanks for playing Mike Longo today. Could you please also give a nod to trumpeter Wallace Roney, dead at 59 yesterday of COVID-19 (aka Wuhan virus). He began as a protégé of Miles Davis, but with a gentler, warmer tone, I'd say. I'm playing some of his orchestral sounds from his Misterios album, perhaps two or three cuts, on my radio show Friday. I would recommend the opening of Memoria E Fado, with flutes cushioning his trumpet sound at the start. New York is the epicenter of jazz, sadly of the virus too.
Sad to add that paterfamilias Ellis Marsalis, 85, just died of Wuhan virus complications tonight. The virus is hitting America's two major centers of Jazz, New Orleans and New York, with the highest per capita death rates, exacerbated by irresponsible mayors pushing the populace into mass celebrations of Mardi Gras (February 25) and Chinese New Year parades, running through February 9 (then blaming Trump, of course).
Terrible, terrible. The artistic community has really been so badly hit, and also tragically so many Rabbis in the New York and NJ areas, I keep getting notifications and it's heartbreaking.
Loved that piece, Memoria e fado! Thanks, Gary! What about Peace Piece, by Bill Evans?
I wonder what Mark thinks of Sandie Shaw's "Puppet on a String". Sandie claimed that she, and her song "Girl Don't Come" was banned in the U.S because the title was mistaken as having an "s" at the end of "Girl".
Mark replies:
"Girl Don't Come" is one of Sandie's very greatest records, Sean. On the bouncier stuff, I'll take "Monsieur Dupont" over "Puppet".
As an American teenager in the 60's, I can attest that "Girl Don't Come" got enough air play for me to recall a fairly large share of the lyrics. Either Sandie felt the song wasn't as big a hit in the US as it should have been and was making an excuse - or she was taking the opportunity to make an off-color joke.
Mark replies:
From my very limited acquaintance, Calvert, I can't honestly imagine her making that joke.
I much prefer Mark in written form, as I love to relish the puns and new phrases. Also, I read a lot faster than I listen to a broadcast. Maybe a compromise is to get out the transcript within a few hours of the audio show.
Yeah, I got addicted to his regular written articles back when he had time to write daily. But I accept he must become more public, to help get the word out.
Hi John, the transcripts can be found here:
https://www.steynonline.com/section/84/audio-transcripts
Enjoy!
I enjoy either format but especially like his sign off "Stay Safe and Stay Free" the latter will be harder to do than the former.
Odd that certain British police "services" have tried, contrary to the law, to prevent people from purchasing Easter eggs and alcoholic beverages (whether together, or separately), exploiting their own convenient interpretation of "lockdown" rules.
Easter, booze. Could there possibly be a connection there?
Hmm, "Easter worshippers" are policed at supermarkets but "grooming gangs" operate with impunity. Who would've thought?? #EverythingIsPolicedExceptCrime
Keep these coming, yes! About all I can cope with these very unsettling days is a focused listening experience.
The other element of the bullying of the dog walkers at Curbar Edge is that it's the poshest part of Derbyshire pullulating with senior coppers, senior civil servants and politicians. The Lodge meeting must have been lively that weekend.
The only dog walkers are Legacy Britons. A shift in the demography should take care of this.
Guayaquil is quite a violent place. Bodies in the street may not be altogether unusual.
So glad I discovered the Mark Steyn Club. Love the show, the breadth of topics, the insight and quality. Also, the song of the week, the poems, the tales for our time but please, please Mark could you make Brit-Wanker Copper of the Day a regular feature. Hilarious if it was not so tragic.They could eventually be collated into a book, another best seller, another manifestation of the civilisational decline here in the UK. Of course, your reports will be construed as hate crimes by the plods and I suspect that on your next visit to the UK they will board your flight on arrival at Heathrow and arrest you, all twenty of them. But don't worry, Club Members will rally to your defence.
Thank you again! My wife and I have enjoyed all of the episodes to date.
Excellent show! So much to unpack. Corona virus should be called the Kungflu from now on, so we all can be #KungfluFighting from now on!
Five years ago, President Trump said we had to limit immigration from Mexico. Prophetic he was, so will DC finally see the wisdom of this policy, now that Mexico's refusal to implement infection protocols is leading to the virus spreading more and more into the US?
Steynobyte Steynobits?
Hi Mark,
I have to say I was a little skeptical about the new audio format at first, but only because I was concerned it would end up being too successful and come to supplant your writing, of which I am a huge fan. But four episodes in I am more than satisfied, and if the format works better for you during all this, it will work just fine for me.
Also, I don't know what's taken me so long to express my appreciation for the original music written for the show, but holy cow! Those little jazzy numbers that bookend each episode? So good! Horns, drums, bass, flute, sax, composition, performance, production, everything about them is first rate, and it has been a real treat hearing them again and again each day.
Thank you, Mark, and a big thank you to everyone who makes these productions possible. Please stay safe.
Ken, those "little jazzy numbers" are quite good, aren't they? Little known fact: the flute intro on the theme was done by Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull. I am told there exists a recording of Ian and Mark doing "Locomotive Breath" and hope some day Mark will post it here.
Now remember, while it didn't quite make the cutoff, this post was inspired by yesterday's date. Well, except for the first sentence which was sincere.
Oh, you're good! I had to look it up, but I love that Locomotive Breath is supposedly about population growth. Can't be too many songs out there about demography!
Mark, does Boris Johnson share your (our) outrage with the non-handling of the grooming gangs antics by government officialdom and the bobbies?
REALLY enjoying the daily episodes!
Please keep these coming. You may not realize how much we need your warrior spirit for free speech and truth but never more than now....
Ditto!
Another great show, Mark - especially the audio archives.
On border control, crisis-rationing of healthcare resources, and the future of the cruise ship industry: Australian hospitals now risk being swamped by (mainly North American) coronavirus refugees!!
From "The Australian", by Yoni Bashan:
- A military-style operation is being planned to helicopter doctors on to eight cruise ships stranded off the NSW coast to test more than 8000 people in a bid to end a standoff that police fear could overwhelm Sydney's intensive care units.
- "It would be an extremely large operation," [NSW Police Commissioner] Mr Fuller said on Wednesday. "It would involve the Department of Defence, we would need medical support. If we had to extract 250 or 350 patients that needed a high level of care, we would need to look at portable hospitals, portable triaging, and that's before you even think about the logistics and security of moving 250 or 350 people."
- In Western Australia, German-owned cruise ship Artania has similarly refused to leave Fremantle port since arriving on March 25. Forty-one of its passengers and crew have been transferred to Perth hospitals, with some remaining in critical condition.
- "When we get 8615 people on to the shores of NSW, if 10, 15, 20 per cent require intensive care over the next 10 to 14 days, it would decimate our health system," he said.
#InterestingTimes. Very keen to hear your take on this!
Mark,
Put your mind at ease about the format! "The Mark Steyn Show" and "Tales for Our Time" are really helping me get through my stay in Self-Isolationland. And I second Josh Passell on Carl Douglas' "O-ho-ho-ho".
Tsk Tsk, suspicious about where the infected parts came from. Next thing you'll know, you'll be suspicious about the official line over who started that fire at Notre Dame.
Thanks, Mark! I love this format! I want 2 hours every day and wouldn't mind if it eventually became video formatted. Yesterday you mentioned that the reviews were somewhat mixed and, I have to say, it made me wonder a bit about the folks in the club and whether they really all shared my good taste. The only thing I can think of is that they might prefer your writing... justifiably, but only because it is so uniquely fabulous.
Please continue shaming the British police. I love it. I read a lot of foreign detective fiction and I have to say I'm always struck by a few things (that likely say a lot about European society). First, any time the detectives meet someone who practices Christianity they refer to the person as "religious" in a meaningful way. I find it a bit of a meaningless descriptor in the USA, but the fact that it is supposed to carry so much meaning for the readers is telling. The second is the attitude the detectives (and, supposedly, the reader) have anytime someone is found to own a firearm. They are immediately supposed to be guilty and / or idiots. Again, telling...
Also, please continue the lovely little COVID19 obituaries. I feel that they might start to become a bit overwhelming, unfortunately. If you ever need a medical advisor for the show, feel free to contact me.
We are, I hope, getting to the point that the people will start to tell the self-righteous press / administrators / assorted elected officials to screw-off when they claim racism regarding the terms used to describe the virus / the needs for multi-gendered bathrooms / the worries about the incarcerated / etc. But then again maybe not... The fact that the British people continue to be willing to put up with grooming gangs and an utterly awful constabulary and do nothing about it makes me worried that the West just doesn't have enough energy for anything anymore.
I can't be the only one whose heart flutters at hearing the "O-ho-ho-ho" of Kung Flu Fighting early every show. Don't you ever stop singing that. Sadly, my heart does another flutter later on when you get to the Last Call. But don't stop that, either. We cannot forget what these murderous bastards have done. Speaking of Acts of the Bastards (a lost book of the Bible?), the findings by the IG that not one, not a few, but ALL of the FBI's FISA court applications were as queer as three-dollar bills should fill us with molten fury. It does me. The word "coup" implies a sudden blow. But this coup against an elected President follows the Deep State model of lugubrious lawlessness. It is death by paperwork. I won't indulge my darker impulses to wish evil to befall the culprits, all of them—merely the fruits of the evil they have sown.
Unfortunately the FBI's lawlessness will be ignored by the Democrats and the DNC propagandist press in favor of ferreting out every last racist who insists on accurately describing where the Chinese virus came from.
That picture you have there. That's one of the places that has an ancient glacier that is melting I believe. Antarctica at one time wasn't frozen over but now it is. As tectonic move and create new land under the ocean raising the sea level and eventually the current placement of our continents keep moving along, the push for the green new deal is supposed to freeze the earth in place. This planet will do whatever it wants and doesn't care about how many species it eliminates in it's own evolution. We get told erosion happens when rocks get exposed to water and it slowly wears away yet when it comes to the mountains that produce streams we never get told that they erode as well. No one seems to understand that the world we know it will never be the same be it a century from now, a decade from now, or even tomorrow. San Andrea's fault line will eventually give in and then what? From blame it on the rain to blame it on Trump.
I remember when Laura Rosen Cohen coined the phrase "Security is the new shut up." Would you say that now Health is the new shut up? There seems to be no end to the things that government is now entitled to order us to do, all in the name of Health. Andrew Cuomo just threatened to permanently close churches that refuse to obey his orders to stay closed. Why shouldn't he be able to insist that all religious messages have to be vetted and officially approved by the government too, lest they lead to someone doing something unhealthy?
I just heard on the CBC that it will take another 2 weeks before authorities can determine if the current measures are "flattening the curve". "IF" In other words, they don't know. They've just blindly thrown our society off a cliff, on the chance that something someone said MIGHT happen. If 2 weeks go by and the curve is still going up, what then? Does anyone remotely imagine that Trudeau will say, "Well, that experiment didn't pan out. Everyone might as well go back to normal." No, they'll just keep doing it for another 2 weeks, and then another 2 weeks after that, all the while insisting on their absolute authority to do anything they want to us, because Health.
Alas, the effect of lag means it's going to get much worse even though it's improving: deaths (from infections 1-3 weeks ago) are yet to occur - and peak - in regions where outbreaks have been poorly controlled.
For an interesting historical perspective on church closures etc: "Lessons Learned from the 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota" (Public Health Reports. 2007 Nov-Dec; 122(6), Miles Ott et al)... History repeating, as Mark has noted.
The anal-retentive nature of govt. " workers " makes them preoccupied with pension benefits. If there is a way to combat the progression of this waste, it is by stopping all such deferred [ hidden ] costs to our economic production. Currency dilution may accomplish this end ." It's later than you think " ...Guy Lombardo [also a Canadian ] Sung by Kenny L'd'o ?
Mark replies:
That's a great song, Earl - and written by the fellow who co-wrote my Christmas signature song.
Somebody needs to file environmental charges against those "wanker coppers".
The at-home audio show has been very informative—socially and statistically—as all of us expect from MS. The "celebrity" death roll highlights the socially-indiscriminate but definitely age-discriminate nature of all seasonal viral infections. I hope that MS's emphasis on this helps all of us not only to remember the victims, but also the pathetic, weak, contemptible etc nature of the Chinese government and our absolute need to disentangle ourselves (and that's all free nations) from their pathologies (note the re-opening of "wet" markets). Question: will world wide consumers be able to pressure suppliers for reliable information about the sourcing of goods? "Made in America".....but with parts from Wuhan just won't do it.