Maybe I Should Start Keeping A Plague Diary - Or, Too Bad The Primaries Are Over, Could Have Used The Distraction

Listening to the health and science reporter Donald McNeil talking with Rachel Maddow last night, his question as to why officials in the United States are following the Italian model instead of learning successful strategies developed rapidly in Asian countries that have flattened the curve of the Covid-19 virus there leads me to wonder if this is yet another price we pay for Euro-centric racism, something that has cost us time and time again.  I don't know the answer to that but I think it's a good question to ask.  

I think the terrible response to this in both the United States and Britain prove that there is something systemically wrong with the political, media and social habits and practices in those countries.  I think one of the biggest problems is the level of cynical unreality that we have been gulled into living in.  I wonder if any counteracting historical habits derived from religion may have, potentially, given us at least a small but meaningful disinclination from giving into cynicism and the kind of fantasy that is encouraged by the entertainment and advertising industry - what, for most practical purposes the unregulated media has replaced for the presentation of reality and fact, the thing that lets a "reality" TV star be put into the presidency as the captain of a ship of not at all amusing or cute pirates.