I am reading the information on the new coronavirus out of the WHO and the CDC and the science journals and the newspapers and Facebook posts, and listening to the news stories – – I read and listen to everything — and what I want to say today is that I don’t expect any foreign doctor to talk good about bush medicine. I know most hospital doctors are not like Dr. Karl Heusner, and Dr. Bernard Bulwer¯hospital doctors don’t know about herbs, and I know they, the First World ones for sure, are in bed with big pharmacy.

Notably absent from the marijuana discussion are the doctors, and the reason for that, I suspect, and maybe you know, is that big pharmacy couldn’t do anything with weed while it was illegal.

This new coronavirus, no herbalist can tell you they have the cure, but what we KNOW is that when we have anything in the area of the respiratory system the shaak oil and the contreebo and the garlic and the ginger and the honey have some powers to protect and to heal.

When it comes to the flu, modern medicine has developed some vaccines, and bully for their work, but when you’ve got the virus flu the best they can do is try and keep you comfortable. They have good antibiotics in their arsenal for bacterial lung infections, and they are in their zone when talking about these things. They know nada about bush business, so the best they can say is, ‘we don’t know’, and we shouldn’t read anything into that because they don’t, know.

I will say that I know a number of people who hate pharmacy drugs and swear by the herbs and the Vicks (which is one of their products, but it doesn’t come in a pill and is not given through an injection, so they treat it like herbal medicine). Most of those herbs and stuff have healing powers. They might not have any effect on the new coronavirus, but I wouldn’t turn my back on the Old Time Religion.

I love the story coming out of Rwanda, about the hand washing before getting on the bus. If we’re going for the blow to wipe out this new virus, then it will be an immense help for the government to subsidize bus transportation so that the buses travel at half-capacity until the all clear. (Ed. NOTE: The columnist has explained that what he means by subsidizing bus transportation is helping bus owners put more buses on our roads so that the buses are not so jammed up with passengers breathing into each other’s faces.)

There are some more things we have to do¯it’s great that the handshake is gone, kaput, and hand washing is in, and license is given to tell me when I’m drunk that I’m talking too close to your face. You’re not telling me to give space because you hate me, but because our medical department has made an order that we not be so friendly. Wait, is the abrazo a story of the past too? Oh well, if it is for the good of all.

With all the hygiene it could be goodnight for the other influenzas¯they will hate this new coronavirus because all our stepped-up hygiene practices will decimate their ranks. One day it will be like 500 years ago, the Americas before Columbus came¯we will go through an entire rainy season and the only sneezing and sniveling will be from the allergies.

Incidentally, it was an absolutely brilliant move by the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, and his health team to preemptively lock down their borders. El Salvador has 6.5 million people in an area that is not bigger than Belize. If anyone with the virus enters El Salvador, they would have a major problem containing it.

Some docs thought it best to take it on the chin

The docs who supported the idea of allowing the coronavirus to run its course argued that an exposed population would build up resistance in their ranks. The risk for old folk would have increased a hundredfold.

There are reports that Obama was trying to eliminate older folk with one of his proposed medical reforms. Obama didn’t give a daam because he doesn’t have a mother or a father, and forget the politics, he is half-white.

If you aren’t afraid of facts, and you don’t mind being called a racist, you know that white people are a cold race, maybe because they live in countries that are normally freezing, like ice box. White people are the architects of WW I, WW II, and slavery. They produced Hitler, they produced King Leopold, and they took out Arbenz. They control the bombs.

You want to know cold? Just look at Ashcroft, who had Ralph as his friend and Dean as his lawyer. The PUP gave Ashcroft control of our assets for a song, maybe because they thought (I said maybe) that he would do wonders and we would all be better for it. We ended up putting wi han eena taiga mouth.

The way it looked, the British and Trump were vacillating on the course, and they tacked to come on page with the WHO because of people pressure, and when Italians started turning up sick.

Italy put a bad scare in the British, and Trump, and us too

If you follow the line, the game the British and Trump were playing was that it might be a good idea to not get drastic about the disease. My sense is that a couple of our guys were leaning that way also. Okay, they were studying the options.

It is likely that COVID-19 will become a member of the dirty flu club that we have to put up with every year when the weather turns grey, but the decision coming from the WHO appears to be that we will not accept this one without a fight, no, not with this one.

I don’t think the British, and Trump, were that badly shaken by what happened in China. See, China is supposed to be “Third World”, even though it is China that taught those bohgaz to bathe before they get into bed at night, and to develop other good hygiene practices. The initial story was that the mortality rate was around 5% in Wuhan, but outside of Wuhan it was around or below 2%, and falling, and that indicated that the disease wasn’t as bad as it first looked.

Viruses aren’t easy to fight. They are the unseen enemy, and when they appear it is nearly impossible to eradicate them. Guess what? At the beginning, science struggled to find out if viruses were living or dead, and not being able to determine that, science sensibly moved on to finding out how to fight them. Just about the only virus that has been defeated by modern medicine is smallpox, which was declared eradicated in 1979 after tremendous efforts led by the mighty, indefatigable WHO.

If Italy, a G-7 country, the land of the fabled Mediterranean diet, hadn’t taken such a body blow, the British and Trump would not have given in to all the draconian measures to ward off the virus. Italy has Europe’s oldest population, but is a G-7 country — you’re talking about some of the wealthiest people in the world. You would expect them to have the best medical facilities. Despite that, news coming out of Italy was that the mortality rate was as high as 9%, though most experts said that, when all the factors were considered, it was more like 5%.

Old people know that something will come along to bump them off, but 5% mortality in a population means an imminent, total wipeout. A lot of rich people became very worried when they saw what was happening in Italy, and hence the painful big shutdown of business.

Pathway

I don’t know what the distraction is, but after a few weeks of excellent work on the pathway in Camalote things have come to a screeching halt. The pathway is not complete from end to end of the village, and in the section they so excellently worked on recently there is need for a couple or three narrow wooden bridges. It’s the dry season: make hay while the sun di shine, Braa.