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Tuesday September 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 15, 2020

In ‘Hoax,’ Brian Stelter Ventures Where No Author Has Gone Before

Aside from a vague sense that time is now divided into “before the pandemic” and “during the pandemic,” it’s hard to have perspective on the events of the past six months. Brian Stelter’s “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth” is among the first books to explore where we are now — and it’s certainly the first to examine how the president’s preferred news source played a role in the dissemination of misinformation about coronavirus.

August 7, 2020

“Fox’s longest-tenured medical analyst, Dr. Marc Siegel, told Hannity on March 6, ‘at worst, at worst, worst case scenario, it could be the flu,’” writes Stelter, who is CNN’s chief media correspondent, in the book’s prologue. “This was shockingly irresponsible stuff — and Fox executives knew it, because by the beginning of March, they were taking precautions that belied Siegel’s just-the-flu statement. The network canceled a big event for hundreds of advertisers, instituted deep cleanings of the office and began to put a work-from-home plan in place. Yet Fox’s stars kept sending mixed messages to millions of viewers.”

In a phone interview, Stelter explained how he became interested in the president’s relationship with Fox because “it’s the only story of the Trump years that’s left.” He said, “It’s not as if Trump is addicted to the best-researched, most in-depth, meticulously sourced material in the world. If he were, we’d all be better off, right?” The book was late — “I had blown through deadlines” — so, “come February and March, we realized that the pandemic was an essential part of the story because of Fox’s downplaying the disease and President Trump’s failures early on.”

January 24, 2017

“Hoax,” now in its second week on the hardcover nonfiction list, was originally called “Wingmen” because “Trump has wingmen, like Sean Hannity,” Stelter said. “My editor gets all the credit for the title. In this war on truth we are all living in, ‘hoax’ is a potent, malicious, ugly little word and Trump has been using it more every year. So has Fox.”

Stelter has been “over the moon” about the response to the book: “I keep hearing from readers who say ‘Hoax’ helps them understand their own family a little bit better. There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are — how there’s been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it’s not often recognized.” (NYT) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/books/review/brian-stelter-hoax.html

Meanwhile, The president visited California after weeks of silence on its wildfires and blamed the crisis only on poor forest management, not climate change. “I don’t think science knows” what is happening, he said. (NYT) 

 

Tuesday July 14, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday July 14, 2020

When will it be safe to reopen the U.S. border?

How much longer can this go on? How much longer can the world’s longest undefended border remain largely sealed? 

April 18 2020

It’s an increasingly urgent question facing Canadian governments. Even with the U.S. border open for commercial business, and exceptions being made to allow families to reunite, our joint border is mostly closed. And the impact is huge.

This discussion is relevant this week for a couple of reasons. First, the current emergency border-crossing restriction package is set to expire July 21. Second, the government is facing mounting pressure from commercial interests.

The Canadian Travel & Tourism Roundtable, a coalition of 120-odd travel and tourism companies including Canada’s major airlines, last month sent an open letter to the government calling for the loosening of travel restrictions. 

A second open letter was sent by Canada’s airlines and many of Canada’s biggest companies including banks and telecoms.

On one hand it is hard to blame the tourism sector, which has been among the hardest hit by the pandemic, for putting its economic interests first. But it is also more than a little troubling that airlines were quick to do away with social distancing minimums when we know they are crucial in slowing the spread of COVID-19. 

May 24, 2020

Fortunately, it’s not up to the tourism/travel sector to make public policy. That’s up to the government, and based on what top officials such as Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland are saying, protecting public health is still the top priority. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: “We are going to be very, very careful about when and how we start reopening international borders.”

Something most people do not recognize is that cross-border traffic is already increasing thanks to loosening of some restrictions. The volume of traffic crossing land borders has increased from about 115,000 a week from late April to early May to 175,000 a week in late June. Officials say those figures include commercial and non-commercial traffic. The number of non-commercial highway travellers entering Canada has nearly doubled over that period, going from about 3,300 a week to about 6,500.

June 2, 2017

At the same time as Canada is allowing more cross-border traffic, the situation in the U.S. is deteriorating. As recently as the weekend states like Florida were announcing record new infections and deaths. Florida alone reported more than 15,000 new cases. American leadership is polarized, with the Trump administration basically in denial. Some states are rolling back reopening, others seem unwilling to do so despite exploding infection rates.

Worst of all, America has no apparent unified strategy to regain control. Even if Trump loses the November election, it’s predicted to take months to change direction and get COVID under control. 

Under these circumstances, how on earth could Canada even consider significantly loosening border controls? Doing so would literally put at risk everything this country has done right to flatten the pandemic curve. All the work and sacrifice Canadians have endured would be at risk. 

It is said that governing in these times is an ongoing struggle to balance safety with renewed prosperity. Fair enough. But on some fronts there can be no overall compromise. The U.S. is not a safe place to be, and Canada should not face further exposure until things change. That could easily keep the border closed until the end of this year, at least, say infectious disease experts.

It’s a sad reality with a great cost to Canadians and our economy. But we have no choice. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Thursday June 11, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday June 11, 2020

Brazilian president’s pandemic denial has cost lives, but may not hurt him politically

What do you do if you are in charge of dealing with the pandemic and the number of deaths is getting out of control?

Simple. Stop publishing the number.

August 28, 2019

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been having a bad time with the pandemic. His default mode has been callous disinterest: when told in early May that the country’s COVID-19 death toll had reached 5,000, he said “So what? I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

So on Sunday, with Brazil’s death toll about to pass 40,000 and become second only to that of the United States, Bolsonaro stopped his government from publishing the total any more.

From now on, only today’s number of infections, deaths and recoveries will be announced. No more awkward comparisons with other countries, no five-digit running total to confront him with his failure each day. And of course no attempt to establish the real number of deaths, which is almost certainly at least twice the official number since many victims never got to hospitals.

December 16, 2019

There is a temptation to group the three populist leaders of big Western democracies together, and they do have a lot in common. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson removed a similarly damning piece of data from the daily news conference when the UK’s death toll per million overtook that of every other major European country. (It is now second-worst in the entire world.) 

America’s Donald Trump, Bolsonaro’s idol, spent just as much time in the early months of this year belittling the gravity of the threat (Bolsonaro: “It’s only a little flu”; Trump: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”) None of the three men will wear a mask, and they are all compulsive serial liars.

March 16, 2020

Nevertheless, there are major differences. Johnson manages to sound as if he cares about all the lives lost, and Trump at least goes through the motions occasionally. Johnson eventually declared a lockdown, although much too late, and Trump at least went along for a while with the lockdowns declared by almost all of the states.

Bolsonaro, by contrast, openly condemned the lockdowns declared by the various Brazilian states and ostentatiously disobeyed them. He held rallies and took crowd baths. He swiped his nose on the back of his hand and then shook hands with a fragile old lady. He showed up at a barbecue on a Jet Ski.

May 3, 2017

He has fired two successive health ministers since January because they were taking the pandemic too seriously and hindering Brazilians’ return to work. He joined a street protest calling for a return to the military dictatorship that finally fell in 1985. He regularly vilifies the poor, the left, Indigenous Brazilians, gays and non-whites.

And he is currently presiding over a pandemic that will probably kill over 100,000 Brazilians without lifting a finger to stop it.

Yet in late 2018 he won the presidential election in the first round with 55 per cent of the vote, and his character was hardly a secret even before the election. A recent poll showed that his popularity is now down to 32 per cent, so Brazilians have noticed that something is wrong with him, but it still verges on the inexplicable. Or does it?

The electorate that voted for Bolsonaro in 2018 was little changed from the one that gave Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva, the absolute antithesis of Bolsonaro, two terms in the presidency immediately before him. Just as the American electorate that put Trump in office in 2016 was little changed from the one that elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. (Gwynne Dyer – Hamilton Spectator) 

 

Thursday May 14, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 14, 2020

‘Social bubbles’ allow you to see friends as coronavirus lockdowns ease — but they might not work

As more countries look to lift their coronavirus lockdowns, “social bubbles” have been floated as an idea of how to ease restrictions, but experts say they could be difficult to put into practice.  

Marvellous Maps

A social bubble entails allowing people to form a group with a select number of people they are allowed to see socially outside their own household. 

They have been put forward as a way to continue containing the spread of Covid-19, which has infected more than 3.6 million people worldwide and killed over 257,000, according to the latest figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. 

New Zealand — which has been heralded as an example for bringing its coronavirus cases down to zero — has already implemented social bubbles. It lifted certain lockdown restrictions last week and allowed people to expand their bubbles to contact with close family outside their own households. 

April 18 2020

Meanwhile, Belgium is reportedly considering allowing people to socialize with a group of up to 10 people. It currently allows people to meet up with two others outside their household, so long they are outside and keep a distance from each other.

William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said social bubbles were “certainly a component of how, once the initial outbreak is under control, measures could be refined.” 

However, he added that “as the size of the cluster grows, the probability that one of its members could become infected obviously increases.”

Mike Tildesley, an associate professor who specializes in infectious disease control at the University of Warwick, said that while “in principle, it’s a really sensible strategy,” practically it would be difficult to implement. 

He also said that narrowing down a list of friends — and ensuring that those friends also have the same list — sounded like a “social nightmare.” 

“You could envisage this situation where you name a group of friends, they name a group of friends that includes you, but it has some people that aren’t included on your list and all you’ve got is some sort of porous process that (the coronavirus) filters through the population more slowly that it did before,” Tildesley added. (CNBC) 

 

Wednesday April 15, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 15, 2020

After Mocking ‘King’ Trump, Cuomo Says Virus Should Be ‘No-Politics Zone’

Since the coronavirus began to ravage New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has used a fine mix of outright flattery and back-room diplomacy to draw down a variety of federal support, preaching nonpartisanship while mostly avoiding direct attacks on President Trump.

Marvellous Maps

In a span of about 24 hours this week, however, Mr. Cuomo, more typically known for his bruising political style, appeared to return to his roots. 

In a frenzy of television appearances on Tuesday, Mr. Cuomo urged the president to avoid being “dictatorial.” He said on CNN that Mr. Trump’s coronavirus response had been “schizophrenic.” About 30 minutes later on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he compared the president’s daily briefings to “a comedy skit,” while saying no governor should watch them because “there’s no value in it.”

Mr. Cuomo’s comments were prompted by Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claim during a White House news conference on Monday evening that he had “total authority” over the states when it came to reopening the economy.

That claim was quickly rebuked by several governors, including Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who heads the National Governors Association. But it was Mr. Cuomo who used the sharpest language, threatening to undo weeks of diplomacy toward the White House.

Mr. Cuomo’s shift in tone comes at a time when New York’s once-urgent need for immediate resources from the federal government has lessened, with many indicators showing a so-called flattening of the curve in the state.

Coronavirus cartoons

It also followed the introduction of the governor’s new coalition with his counterparts from six neighboring states to draft a plan to reopen the region’s economy — a move that displeased President Trump, whose exasperation grew Tuesday after Mr. Cuomo’s media appearances.

“Cuomo’s been calling daily, even hourly, begging for everything, most of which should have been the state’s responsibility, such as new hospitals, beds, ventilators, etc.,” the president wrote on Twitter. “I got it all done for him, and everyone else, and now he seems to want Independence! That won’t happen!”

Mr. Trump followed up with another post in which, referring to the film “Mutiny on the Bounty,” he compared the governors’ coalition to mutineers turning on their captain.

But given a chance to respond at his daily news briefing later Tuesday morning, Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, held back, repeatedly saying that he did not want to argue with Mr. Trump.

“The president was clearly unhappy,” Mr. Cuomo said, noting the “Mutiny on the Bounty” tweet and other remarks by Mr. Trump, who he said “was clearly spoiling for a fight on this issue.” (New York News)

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