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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

1) SARS and MERS did NOT escape the first few places they appeared. Toronto was one; contained. So COVID could have been, and the most-local public health efforts failed when they COULD have succeeded; the original post was about how that was in spite of literally heroic efforts by public health. They were sabotaged by ass-covering incompetent dictators.

Never mind lab/market: the crime was sabotaging public health authorities.

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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

2) Other polities (countries, states, provinces) did also fail in their work, almost always because they were sabotaged by ass-covering, "economy concerned", non-medical politicians.

But they would not have had a problem if Wuhan health doctors had not LITERALLY BEEN DETAINED. (staying on topic).

So they are to be blamed to some extent for every case in China outside Wuhan, much less every other case outside China.

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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

Competent epidemiologists absolutely were blaming some countries for the variants that appeared in their country first, because the more cases were allowed to spread, the more shots the virus had at mutating into something more infectious.

I blame 3 variants on the startlingly-similar fascist and fascist-adjacent politicians who DELIBERATELY spread:

a) Boris "let 'er rip" Johnson for Alpha, the "BoJo Bug", as high a spread as in the pathetic United States.

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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

b) The P1 variant, the "Bolsonaro Blight", appeared in Brazil after fascist Jair Bolsonaro disparaged all distancing, like Johnson, only much worse. Cases skyrocketed, counting them was suppressed; every one an experiment for the virus.

c) The "Modi Malady", Delta, came out of India after religious-bigot fascist Modi didn't just disparage distancing but actually promoted everybody going to a big national festival. To repeat, at least 4 million dead

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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

Fascist dictators create the worst odds for fighting pandemics, apparently, but it's only statistical. In my "Fascist Flu" post:
http://brander.ca/c19#fascistflu

I note that Beta came from S. Africa, but DESPITE the good efforts of their public health, who were NOT sabotaged by Mr. Ramphosa - hardly a perfect politician, but good on this.

Oddly (or interestingly?) the OTHER two Communist Dictatorships, Cuba and Vietnam, were absolute pandemic superstars.

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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

I say "polities" because you can graph US States by GOP voting percentages vs death and see clear correlation: the more fascist (then only "adjacent") the American state, the more dead-per-million.

It's not about fascism exactly; it's about willingness to lie, unconcern for life, maximum concern for "business". More, it's about visceral hatred of "community" and "pulling together"; Margaret "there is no such thing as society" Thatcher would have sucked, too. /7

@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

Summing up, I absolutely do (and did, in a quarter-million words of blog) BLAME and FAULT all those politicians who had the resources to fight the pandemic (poor Peru, no blame, they're just...poor) and didn't use them because, uh, "priorities".

Polities with the strongest communitarian values (Norway, Denmark, Canada's Maritimes and B.C.) had shockingly better outcomes than "individualist" local cultures.

Who. Are. To. Blame. for their sad outcomes.
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@lesblazemore @katp32 @augieray

After all that. Ahem. I totally withdraw the very oversimplified sentence "It's China's Fault".

It's the fault of the cruel, murderous dictators of China. But that's a clumsy sentence.

Called up for racist graffitti in the toilet, a Scotsman explained that during one piss, there's time to write "Fuck the Pope", but not "Fuck the Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Church of Scotland".

But in future, I will be careful to clarify, at length.

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