We leave most idiots alone, but the overly self important ones require a little teasing, hence why the likes of Waleed Aly, Sarah Hanson-Young, Donkey Teeth and Horse Face receive such regular commentary on Your XYZ.
On XYZ Live, Matty Rose and I have had a lot of fun at the expense of Peter (seriously, I’m not a leftie) van Onselen. A cheerleader for Malcolm “rat” Turnbull, his useful idiot role has been to insist that the Liberal Party should follow Labor to the mythic “sensible centre”, thus grinding Australia’s Overton Window relentlessly left.
He is rightly fair game.
But just when I thought coronachan could not turn any more things on their head, Peter has actually presented some half decent analysis regarding the impact of the Diversity Flu on Indonesia.
From the Australian:
As we look around the world, attention is firmly now focused on surging numbers of coronavirus sufferers in the United States and the United Kingdom, with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnston himself in intensive care fighting for his life.
China was the focus at the start of this pandemic, but the number of new cases there has slowed to a trickle, assuming you can believe what its government tells us.
The whole world is gunning for China now. Donald Trump is even threatening the funding of the World Health Organisation, in the middle of a global pandemic, because it is clearly in the pocket of China.
The Australian mainstream media is finally parroting The XYZ line, reporting on the scandal of Chinese state-owned firms using their employees to strip Australian stores of vital medical supplies, to be sent to China.
And nobody believes the infection and death toll figures coming out of China. Nobody. Ever aware of where the real political centre lies, perhaps Peter feels even he can just come right out and say it. Moving on:
The tragedies in Italy and Spain continue, but the curve in both nations is starting to bend, suggest the worst of the pandemic just might be behind them. Even if there is a long way to go.
Yes. Watch out for the second wave.
In the midst of all of this Australia has done well. Modelling released yesterday highlighting that while we might have acted a week or two later than would have been ideal, Scott Morrison did act two or three weeks early enough to avoid the challenges the US and UK now face.
Grudging respect for Scott Morrison. He has indeed led.
This is where the fun begins.
But the as yet largely ignored looming crisis is just beyond our borders. Indonesia, one of our nearest neighbours and close trading partners is in the early stages of emulating the problems in those nations mentioned which have been brought to their knees by the coronavirus. Only unlike Italy, the UK and US, Indonesia is an underdeveloped nation with very poor health care services, and low numbers of health care workers per head of population. Which is to say nothing about the lack of protective equipment and ventilators to help manage this crisis.
As one of the world’s most populated countries, sitting in fourth place with over 270 million citizens, make no mistake, the coronavirus will devastate Indonesia if it takes hold across the population.
I don’t have a problem with any of this.
And it is hard to see how that might be avoided, with other countries that could help in ordinary circumstances in the midst of their own battles against the virus, and hence focused only on themselves.
You’re on your own, Indonesia.
Not only is Indonesia a poor nation with poor health care services to boot, it has large urban populations living on top of each other with low standards of sanitation. Meaning that the capacity of the virus to spread is heightened in these areas. Policing lock downs and the like designed to bend the curve is also harder in a state like Indonesia.
The threat to one of our nearest neighbours is that a high percentage of the population catches the virus, and when that happens the mortality rate is comparably high by world standards because of the lack of resources to help save individual patients.
Doing the maths on such a scenario is a frightening thought.
I have stated before that hundreds of millions will die from the man-made coronavirus. But not in the first world. It would not surprise me if hundreds of thousands are already dead in the third world. People are literally dropping dead in the streets.
This video shared by David Hilton shows dead bodies overflowing from a morgue in Ecuador.
“It smells like death”: Bodies are piled on top of others at the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo Hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. They are completely without refrigeration or preservation.
Hundreds have died from the coronavirus in the province of Guayas, but authorities only report 145. pic.twitter.com/iYcUm29uaL
— Camila (@camilateleSUR) April 4, 2020
Even Ecuador’s President has admitted the true coronavirus death toll is much higher than the official figure.
Given reports that even in modern economies such as Italy and Great Britain the true death toll has been underreported, it is reasonable to extrapolate this across the rest of the third world. Poor countries simply do not have the resources to conduct broad testing for coronavirus, to treat the infected, nor to count the dead. And we are too preoccupied to help. They’re stuffed.
Australian security experts have often talked about the need to ensure our relationship with our northern neighbour is a good one, and that civil order is well maintained there. The virus may see wholesale change to the political order in a country like Indonesia, which — beyond the humanitarian crisis — has security implications for Australia.
I also said billions will die in the wars it causes.
As the new world order in the coronavirus age confirms the “every nation for itself” principle, it is important we prepare for the crisis to our north, and how it might impact on us.
He actually said “new world order”. He actually said it. Typical projection though, almost Talmudic in its angle, to suggest that the growing nationalism – “every nation for itself” – in response to the Chinese Coronavirus is a bad thing.
