The world has a choice, develop herd immunity and let COVID19 run its course. Leaving the world with a massive body count. With few escaping the loss of a friend or a family member. OR… The human race searches for the 21 st  Century holy grail. A vaccine, that can be distributed on a massive scale to save a significant amount of humanity. Obviously, the latter is more attractive, so how are we doing on our quest? The race for a COVID19 vaccine is on! I better kick off with a word of caution, the development of a safe vaccine for a new illness like COVID19, can take up to 18 months to get to us. That’s with accelerated approval and research moving at unprecedented speed. Saying that, the first COVID-cure-off-the-rank, of course looks like coming from China. This vaccine is being developed by two giant Chinese pharmaceutical companies and it has just completed a second phase of testing. They say it might be ready to go to market by the end of 2020, which is astonishing. In fact,...

Fixing society by letting COVID19 run rampant and cull the elderly, weak and homeless, is a radical point of view to say the least. When you realise such callousness comes from a Californian County official, it’s terrifying. Especially if you’re old, weak or live on the streets. This heartless, ‘let nature take its course’ doctrine, was hurriedly hushed up and the offender, the now infamous Ken Turnage, removed from a Facebook post from the Antioch City Council. Zee Führer  Turnage. Before the post was taken down, the County official stated, ‘We would have significant loss of life, we would lose many elderly, that would reduce burdens in our defunct Social Security System, health care cost. Once the wave subsided, jobs would be available for others and it would also free up housing in which we are in dire need of’. Turnage, then stressed that COVID19’s natural selection would ‘cull the herd’ of people he considered undesirable, which includes the mentally sick. Allowing C...

In the United States, Coronavirus has mutated into Moronavirus! Worryingly, even though there is an international travel ban, this mutation of STUPID20 is spanning oceans and crossing borders with ease. We might try to compensate for Moronavirus’s spread, by saying the world has never had to deal with anything like of COVID19 before but recent U.S. lockdown protests, have probably spread the virus further. Data from protester’s cell phones suggest, the virus travelled hundreds of miles after these protest rallies were over. Little or no precautions were taken and the consequences will become apparent, when America’s death toll breaks through the 100,000 barrier.  Second Wave inevitable? These anti-lockdown protests seem to have provided perfect conditions to launch a second wave of COVID19 in America. Trying to explain exactly what an epidemiologist is to a protester, might have been a task for Fox News. Taking advice from an expert in controlling diseas...

I can only speak for myself but if I wasn’t a sandwich short of picnic before COVID19, I sure as hell am now! The whole world, including yours truly is still becoming familiar with their new normal. Practicing social distancing and spending more and more time at home. Living 24/7 in my own skin, without the distraction of travel or an overpriced coffee, is a sobering experience. There is only so much of a Netflix addiction I can take and believe me, I can take a lot. It’s not knowing when this pandemic will ease up, that’s let the kangaroos loose in my top paddock. (As they never say in Australia.) You a Cooler King? It’s little wonder that the prison system has for years used social isolation, in the form of solitary confinement, as a form of punishment. In the Great Escape, The Cooler King played by the King of Cool Steve McQueen, was always being thrown into ‘The Hole’. Luckily for him, Zee Germans allowed him to take his baseball and glove with him, otherwise he might have...

The Coronavirus pandemic is always on the lookout for the most vulnerable, in the worst conditions. When these two circumstances align, it doesn’t hesitate to send the grim reaper to harvest innocent souls. Sending red lines on graphs shooting upward, at acute angles on news programmes around the world. Such a situation occurred recently in Brazil. A meat packing plant, full of indigenous workers with little access to clean water and health services. BOOM! COVID19’s ship had truly come in! South America’s U.S.A.? Brazil’s death toll is flying faster than the great Jairzinho going down the wing. Surpassing 21,000, its consistently clocking up deaths of over a thousand on a daily basis. Indigenous leaders aren’t sure of how many of this total, are from their community, as indigenous names aren’t always used when being admitted to hospital. Brazil zoomed past Russia, in total infections (330,890) behind the Big Daddy of the COVID19 pandemic, the United States. We’ll Meat Again!...

President Donald Trump has decided to conduct a clinically insane trial of 1! He is taking hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria drug in an attempt to defend against COVID-19. Donnie’s nemesis, the much maligned, World Health Organisation says the science is still unclear about the drug and recommends that it should only be taken under controlled conditions of clinical trials. (So not taken in a random fashion by an orange 5-year old, masquerading as the 25 th  President of the United States?) Poo-pooing Science.  In fact, President Donnie poo-pooed studies that linked  hydroxychloroquine  to high fatality rates in COVID19 patients. Saying that it was a ‘bad survey’ and it had been administered to people who were ‘almost dead’. Meanwhile at the University of Virginia, their studies showed that more than twice as many patients on the drug, died from Coronavirus than those NOT on the drug. While studies in France and China proved the drug was totally ineffective agai...

The U.S. now holds the world record for the highest number of its citizens infected by COVID19. If there was a podium at the Olympic Coronavirus Games, President Donald would be standing atop of the tree, proudly taking the applause of a huge, imaginary crowd of his supporters. (Not unlike his phantom inauguration throng!) His view is that America’s 1.5 million cases, together with a staggering 92,000 deaths, is some sort of spiky red ‘BADGE OF HONOUR’? Spinning is winning! Like an expert spin doctor, President Donald tried to explain his country’s Coronavirus record. ‘You know when you say that we lead in cases, that's because we have more testing than anybody else. So, when we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing. I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better.' Duh! According to an Oxford University scientific publication, the U.S. lags globally behind other countries in testing, on a per cap...

There’s nothing like a good pandemic to flush out, exactly what kind of people we really are. In doing so of course, we also discover the calibre of human being that we have all around us. COVID19, a microscopic virus has put the entire human race under the microscope. Unnaturally cooping us together, this nasty Coronavirus doesn’t take any prisoners, when it comes to highlighting our shortcomings. In short, are we positive, thumbs up ‘glass half fullers’ or a bunch of miserable ‘glass half emptiers’? Let the Lockdown Games begin! COVID19 a killer you can survive. Yes, COVID19 is terrifying but you can come out the other side and live to tell the tale. It’s not many diseases that have brave nurses the world over, as frightened as the patients they’re caring for. When it has you in its grip with a fever, rasping cough, abdominal and chest pains, coupled with a shortness of breath, you really think you’re not long for this world. When you start bringing up blood and your te...

Where to start? Well with Banksy of course. His playful take on Vemeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, ‘Girl With A Pierced Eardrum’ has got an overnight makeover by the master of stealth himself. Bringing her bang up-to-date into the Coronavirus torn 21 st  Century. She now dons a blue face mask, adhering to one of the recommended remedies to fight the virus. While still ignoring another. She’s outside. Silly noodle! SofART? If the audience won’t come to art, art will come to the audience. With self-isolation the order of the day, events all over the world, have been cancelled. The arts have been forced to reinvent themselves, which could be, in the long run be a good thing. Artists who are ingenious by nature, have picked up the pandemic gauntlet and proved, that you can’t keep a good artist down. It’ll take more than a pesky pestilence, plague or pandemic to beat a creative mind into submission.  Creative Minds Always whirring!   Beethoven’s uplifting ‘Ode to ...

It’s that time in the COVID19 pandemic, for old Charlie Dickhead (yours truly), to dust off his Dickens and go all philosophical and shit. Trying desperately to appear more intelligent than I actually am, by trotting out ‘ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness’. But spookily these words actually hit home. Our world is in turmoil, just as it was in the late 18th Century.  When ‘The Terror’ of a Revolution was swishing off heads, faster than you can say ‘Robespierre is a garlic munching, frog eating t***!’ Bad/Good/COVID19 Times.  (Multiple Choice) As Charles put it, ‘It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness’. In bad times, we tend to innovate like crazy. Our minds tend to go into overdrive and technology has a growth spurt. This terrifying COVID-19 pandemic is causing so much change, that we may never be the same again. We’ve suddenly got all the time in the world to actually ...