Posts
 |
| Communist China is angry with a Danish paper for printing this cartoon. It's the paper which held the Draw Mohamet competition. |
Andrew Neil@afneil
When even President Macron says supply chains will have to become more French, from food to pharma, then you know globalisation will be in serious retreat in 2020s.The coronavirus and other epidemics could have been prevented internationalism, i. e. by costly action by what used to be called the Great Powers and are now called the G7. On the other hand globalisation and mass movement of people around the world caused this disaster.
This virus panic will have lots of consequences but no-one knows what. But stress reveals us all and will reveal Donald Trump, Boris, Macron and all the leaders. People may admire Boris's manliness (perhaps I mean fortitude or substance) and notice Trump's lack of manliness and general oddness - but it all depends on how this plays out.The EU has been revealed to be essentially a corpse. The EU cannot aid Italy because there’s no central EU Government with the tax revenue to do so and why should other countries give money to Italy? A poll in Italy said 49% would vote to leave the EU.
How will the USA emerge from this? Nobody knows. China will have fewer friends in the West for sure.
An anonymous British Cabinet minister told the Daily Telegraph:
An anonymous British Cabinet minister told the Daily Telegraph:
“We won’t be able to lift the lockdown until the public feels ready for it. The Prime Minister’s illness has probably added another week to when that point will come, because it’s made everyone feel as if they know someone who has come close to losing their life to the virus and it has changed attitudes."
Surely this means that people will continue to self isolate etc etc until they feel it is safe not to, even if no longer required to do so by the police, and this seems to me to be a good outcome.
Sweden with no lockdown might not be doing so badly despite the stuff in the media, according to an article in Unherd. Apart from our other problems we have the perennial problem of unintelligent and misinformed journalists copying one another.
Sweden with no lockdown might not be doing so badly despite the stuff in the media, according to an article in Unherd. Apart from our other problems we have the perennial problem of unintelligent and misinformed journalists copying one another.
Sweden with no lockdown might not be doing so badly despite the stuff in the media
ReplyDeleteIt's not just the media that we can't trust. Western politicians, the media, bureaucrats and scientists are all equally politicised and everything they say about this crisis has to be regarded with scepticism.
And while there's a lot of data it's not clear that any of the official data from western countries is worth anything - apart from anything else every country has its own way of classifying CV deaths and infection rates so comparisons between countries are pretty much meaningless.
It is quite possible for those with an axe to grind to produce figures that show Sweden has either done very well or very poorly.
So in the end we'll probably never know if lockdowns and social distancing actually achieved anything or not. The pandemic will burn itself out and the West will have learnt nothing.
I disagree.
Delete