The two pandemics
By Carlos Alberto Montaner
The Economist claims that Donald Trump will lose the November 3 election. They have even dedicated an editorial to explain why voters should favor Joe Biden. In my opinion, The Economist is the most prestigious popular news outlet in the world and reflects what the polls tell. The great British liberal magazine, founded in 1843, is willing to bet its prestige supporting that statement. (Liberal, in the European sense of the term, that is, conservative on fiscal matters plus free markets –that’s why Marx and Lenin detested it–, but very open on social issues, that’s why the conservatives rejected it).
At the beginning of April, the situation was different. From that moment, things began to go wrong for Trump. It wasn’t his nasty bragging. It was neither his behavior as a bully, as a merciless thug against the physical limitations of his political adversaries, whether it was John McCain or Serge Kovaleski, an NYT journalist Trump made fun at by imitating his spastic movements in public. It was not, in short, his character which would have influenced his hypothetical defeat. The essential thing was the virus, Covid-19, and the havoc it caused in American society. No one can handle that. In democracies the social tendency is to make whoever is in power pay for the mistakes.
In 1918, perhaps in Kansas, the pandemic of the virus called by the aseptic and unsexy name of H1N1 began. Theoretically, it traveled from Europe with the first American soldiers returning after contributing to victory in World War I. In total, 675,000 infected by the virus died in the US and about 50 million in the whole world. As the 1920 census only counted 106 million people, barely a third of the 330 million that now populate the United States, we must think that the mortality of this influenza, wrongly named “Spanish,” was infinitely higher than that of the current coronavirus.
It was probably similar, although medical care today is better and there are antibiotics to treat bacterial infections that often arise after the attack of viruses. In any case, the conflicts were the same–there were people who refused to put on the face mask or to keep the so-called “social distancing.” Since the Middle Ages, it has been known that these two weapons, plus well-ventilated places, and body hygiene, were almost the only way to defend against epidemics.
When Trump predicts that one day the virus will magically disappear, he is not making it up, but observing what happened in 1920. After 15 terrible months, the H1N1 virus, helped by a fiery summer, vanished with relative ease, but back then aviation was in its infancy. Today it will not disappear until a high percentage of the population is vaccinated and antiviral cocktails are available and at affordable prices, as is the case with AIDS drugs.
I suspect that the H1N1 and Covid-19 political consequences will be very similar. In 1920 there were general elections in the United States. Although the country arrived late to the conflict, it left some 117,000 corpses in Europe (about a fifth of those taken by the pandemic). President Woodrow Wilson had to face the ruin brought by the pandemic and an insubordinate society that didn’t believe in the head of State’s sagacity. Wilson had promised them that he would not allow himself to be dragged into the war by the bellicose Europeans and, in the end, attacks on the US merchant marine by German submarines, plus the well-known “Zimmermann telegram,” made him enter the war.
Wilson’s role as a winner in World War I was useless to him. The US Congress did not approve his famous “14 points,” nor was the country able to participate in the League of Nations. American society, perhaps fatigued by the pandemic and tired of the Democratic Party, elected Warren Harding, a Republican journalist from Ohio, as president. Harding took over a country that was near-bankrupt, but it soon recovered and gave way to the “roaring twenties.”
On that occasion, the Republicans had the greatest victory in history against the Democrats; they won the 1920 election by a margin of 26 points. Harding died of a heart attack in 1923, still in the presidency, leaving his Vice President and successor Calvin Coolidge at the helm. In 1928, the also Republican Herbert Hoover, an engineer, won the presidential election. Hoover was an excellent civil servant who was surprised by the “crash” of the Stock Market in 1929. In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated him, and the cycle of the Democrats began.
In 2020, a century after the previous pandemic, history repeats itself, but the other way around–the virus annihilates Donald Trump and the Republicans. There is some poetic justice in that defeat.
“En las democracias la tendencia social es a pasarle la cuenta a quien esté en el poder.”
Como todo “analista” pagado, lo suyo es una deplorable falacia. Pasan “la cuenta” de los daños económicos o sociales producto de las medidas impopulares o del desgobierno, no de las pestes. Si usted quiere hacernos creer que su hermano murió por culpa del gobierno, hace otro ridículo como a los que ya nos tiene acostumbrados. Se murió principalmente por no haberse prevenido anteriormente con hidroxicloroquina para evitar la reacción proteica que lo mató. Claro que igual pudo morirse, pero el riesgo se reducía sustancialmente. Era médico, pero la sotana no hace al monje, y no supo diferenciar el cientificismo político de la realidad. Empiece usted de una vez a tomar 400 miligramos diarios de hidroxicloroquina y en 30 días estará protegido.
Claro que Trump puede perder, pero por la chusma come-cuento como la que usted alimenta. Por esos que usted llama “cultos portorriqueños”, de los cuales no conocí jamás uno que no fuera drogadicto. Por los millones de anti caucásicos latinos, afros y demás recogidos que son los verdaderos racistas de los EEUU. Por los anti heterosexuales y su “ideología de género”, por los comunistas (improductivos y dañinos), por la delincuencia en su totalidad (que es mucha) y los idiotas útiles de los cuales usted ahora es abanderado.
Cordialmente.
El ingreso de Trump a la Casa Blanca fue posible ante la combinación de múltiples malestares: estancamiento del ingreso del 50% de los hogares menos favorecidos, perdida de fe en la movilidad intergeneracional, antielitismo, auge antisistema, retiro del apoyo popular al globalismo americano, etc. Nada de eso desapareció y sigue siendo el motor de su persistencia
Y hay un importantisimo elemento adicional: el carácter de Trump ya era bien conocido en el 2016, pero no qué características tendría su administación. Había motivos para desconfiar. Nada hay de nuevo con relación a su carácter, pero mucho en cuanto a resultados, la parte práctica.
El hecho de que yo haya votado por Hillary en el 2016 y ahora no haya forma de que repita ese disparate no es un fenómeno aislado. El mismo Ben Shapiro, y muchos otros, admiten que no votaron por Trump (aunque no llegaran al inaudito extremo de votar por Hillary) y ahora lo harán sin vacilación.
No me imagino a nadie que haya votado por el presidente en el 2016 y que no lo haga ahora. Pero sí me puedo imaginar a muchos como Shapiro y yo.
La esperanza demócrata es aumentar drásticamente la participación. Porque, salvo casos como los evangélicos que prefieron quedarse en casa antes que votar por el mormón Romney, los conservadores somos menos apáticos a la hora de ejercer nuestro deber ciudadano.
Las colas para votar anticipadamente demuestran que ese aumento de participación está ocurriendo. La gente ha tomado conciencia de que hay mucho en juego. Pero el entusiasmo en los rallys de Trump y la falta del mismo en los de Biden (las pocas veces que sale de su sótano) apuntan a que es posible que ese aumento no favorezca a los demócratas en esta ocasión.
Pienso igual. En el 2016 había infinitamente más razones para desconfiar de Trump que las que hay hoy.
Y el carácter de un candidato difícilmente sea motivo suficiente para negar el voto.
De lo que estoy seguro es que se va a poner muy entretenido e interesante lo que salga de la ensalada en que se convirtió ésta elección presidencial.
Agrabado todo eso por los efectos de la Pandemia,
A su vez hijos de todo eso
Cubano-Americano desaparecido
“… feeding rats a special diet based largely on diseased potatoes.
Potato plants produce solanine to defend themselves against pathogens, so rotting potatoes are likely to have particularly high levels of it. This study did indeed find increased levels of some blood markers associated with rheumatoid arthritis in these rats. But humans aren’t rats and we don’t eat diets based on rotting potatoes. Even if these results were transferable to humans, how do we know it was the spuds that had the effect, and not the pathogen?
The authors’ conclusion, that everyone with arthritis should eliminate every plant in the nightshade family from their diets, isn’t really a conclusion that can be made from testing one crop in a family of some 3000 species.
This highlights a central problem with any rationale behind the claim: solanine isn’t really found in many plants in the nightshade family, at least not at the same levels as in rotting potatoes. It crops up mainly in the green tissues of growing potato plants. In tomatoes, it is found at far lower concentrations, down to barely measurable traces in some varieties. In goji berries, it doesn’t seem to be present at all.
“Over the years, the claim seems to have cycled and been recycled so many times it is now cited as scientific fact”
These plants may contain other related alkaloids, such as tomatine, which may be the source of some confusion. But picking out solanine as a clear culprit is a tough ask based on the evidence. Solanine is also found in plants outside the nightshade family, from apples to artichokes, none of which seems to be in the cross hairs of proponents of this claim. Meanwhile, some wellness writers say that nightshade plants promote inflammation because they are in the same family as the irritant poison ivy. They are not.
When I dug back through the studies, the one that I kept coming back to as the apparent original source of this claim is one from the late 1970s, when a horticultural researcher noticed his arthritis was alleviated when he quit smoking and stopped eating all other related plants.
Yes, tobacco is in the nightshade family too. Encouraged by this personal anecdote, the researcher conducted a postal questionnaire run through magazine adverts, collated the resulting anecdotes and wrote a book based on his idea. Over the years, supported only by this shaky evidence, the claim seems to have cycled and been recycled so many times that it is now regularly cited as scientific fact.
What we do know, by the way, is that evidence does suggest a link between smoking and rheumatoid arthritis. These anecdotes may have been more to do with giving up smoking one toxic nightshade plant than no longer eating a bunch of safe ones. Go figure.
Given this lack of any solid scientific evidence for this belief, the advice from both the US-based Arthritis Foundation and the British Nutrition Foundation is that tomatoes, potatoes and the like aren’t just healthy additions to our diets, but contain potentially anti-inflammatory compounds like carotenes and vitamin C that can help protect our tissues, possibly benefiting those who have rheumatoid arthritis.
In the face of really no good studies, here is my take: if lived experience has shown that eating these plants is a problem for you, of course, don’t eat them. But if you have been frightened off your favourite foods because of a tabloid headline, take it, as it were, with a pinch of salt.
esto no proviene se la historia de la medicina
Sino de la cabeza de victor lopez. En esa cabeza
Está todo lo que tú necesitas saber and he
Approves this message
Es extraña la desaparición de Cubano. Su tema era la alimentación sana, etc. No hablaba mucho de política. Nada que pudiera molestar a los censores (salvo quizás un lenguaje un poco soez en los poemitas que hacía alguna que otra vez), así que no tiene mucho sentido la posibilidad de que haya sido baneado.
Más sentido tiene con Danettee que decía constantemente improperios a CAM y su nieta.
Es un poco preocupante… ¿Le habrá pasado algo?
Cubano, si lees esto y se trata de que estás muy atareado, al menos di hola en un breve post para que sepamos que estás bien.
El está bien. Apenas tiene tiempo para seguirnos.
Hace dos meses entró y notó la ausencia de victor
Preocupado si se lo “había llevado eso que anda”
yo creo q victor si estuvo jodio
Pero es una falta de profesionalismo para
Dios enfermarse
Magnifico articulo, soy tambien cubano, nacido aqui, soy Independiente votando Democrata. No se preocupe a mi tambien me dieron el carnet del PCC, segun los atorrantes de Miami
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