166

That's how many people died in traffic accidents in the one hour I was grocery shopping this morning.  Nevermind Avian flu, Swine flu, malaria, Ebola, Zika, H1-N1 or COVID, cars are killing 1.5 million people every year around the world, according to the World Health Organization.  That's almost 4,000 deaths EVERY DAY!

Traffic accidents are the top killer of people aged five to 29 -- outpacing any illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties of all the world's armed conflicts.  From 2013 to 2016, the traffic death toll jumped by 100,000 -- not including the 50 million who don't actually die, but are severely and permanently maimed.

In the U.S., 36,560 people died in car crashes in 2018 -- about the same number as killed by guns.  It's astounding!  And in case you think you're safer walking, or riding your bike, in the U.S., you're not.  In the same year, 7,140 health nuts bit it doing these "harmless" activities.  Yet, no one gives a sh-t?!

So, while we're all wringing and washing our hands, staying home and wearing masks, we're in more danger crossing the street or tooling around the average parking lot.  All this delicious data I gleaned from an article in the March/April edition of 'Foreign Affairs' magazine.  Folks, it's always in the numbers.

But the reason no one talks about this is because it's all about the auto industry.  As I always say, whither the car, whither the world economy.

The world runs on cars, so mum's the word!

   

I don't get it either?

Many people die every year from regular flu and this year is no exception, which is why I don't get the hysteria around the new virus?  Here's a headline stashed in the back pages of 'The Calgary Herald':

It's the same with pneumonia.  About 7,000 Canadians die from that disease every year too, mostly seniors.  So, as I said, I don't get it?!

A failure

Canada's reaction to this virus has been an unmitigated disaster.  All too little, too late.  Here's one reason, this person:

Canada's chief medical officer, Teresa Tam, didn't act quickly enough because she didn't want to single out and blame China for fear of racism, etc., etc., etc.  Hello!  Wake up or quit!  

Tam failed, as many editorials have claimed.  As a result, here's what's happening in Alberta:

Here's the reality for most households:

All the provincial premiers are ignoring Trudeau and doing their own thing(s).  Thank God for that! 

E I E I Oh

Trudeau's daily "briefings" are a joke.  He says nothing and answers nothing.  As far as getting all that money announced out to those who need it, forget about it.  All talk about EI might just as well be "E I E I Oh".  Joe Blow can't walk into a local office, stick his hand out and say, "Please give me some of the money the prime minister promised yesterday."  Bureaucracy doesn't work like that.  A lot of paper has to be filled out, forms approved, stamped and moved around and around and around before any money appears.

As I said, it's all a joke and anyone who knows anything about Ottawa knows it.  They didn't call us "paper pushers" for nothing.   

But I wanted to talk about a friend in Italy, who has not been outside her home since Feb. 20th.  With two young children, she and I are in touch via fb and email and my heart goes out to her.  Two of her close neighbours and her aunt have died, several more are in intensive care, she can't see her sister, who lives in the same city (Milan) and her parents are far away and isolated.  Unfortunately, Italy didn't act quickly enough and the whole country is a ghost. 

Our local grocery store announced that the store would be given over to seniors from eight to nine each morning.  Stupidly, I went.  What a disaster!  Shelves empty, long check-out lines and the place filled with much younger people swarming us.  Won't be doing that again! 

Civility is dead among any culture other than the middle-aged, white one.  Waiting in line, I said to the middle-aged, white woman behind me, "Sorry, I have forgotten something.  If the line moves, just go ahead of me, please."  Off I ran, but when I returned, she had pushed my cart along without taking my place.  I cannot say the same for other cultures in that store.  For them, it was every shopper for him/herself. 

Very sad to see.  Puts me in mind of 'Lord of the Flies'. 

We weren't, they were

I'm always bragging that my cohort invented feminism.  "We went to the barricades for you," I scold women who don't take advantage of -- or abuse -- everything we fought for in combining life as a wife and mother with staying in the workforce.

Reading an obituary in 'The Glob and Mail' today reminded me that we weren't in the vanguard.  Women like Donna Scott (and Jean Portugal, see "A true press suffragette," Jan. 10, 2017) were.  How well I remember Donna Scott during my years at Maclean Hunter Publishing in Toronto in the early seventies.  Back then, I thought she was a bitch; now I realize how tough she had to have been to get where she did when she did.

The publishing business was definitely a man's world back then, but if you had talent, there was a place for female journalists and I grabbed one.  I landed in the business publications division of M-H and ran into Donna periodically.  A no-nonsense "broad" in the best sense of that word, she straddled both sides of the street.  In other words, she used her feminine charms when she had to and pulled out the tough street smarts the rest of the time.  I knew she was older, but I would not have guessed 19 years.  In other words, she was blazing the trail while I was cheer-leading my way through high school and drinking and "ahem-ing" my way through university.

"She was just about the first woman in everything she turned to," reads her obit. She was the first woman promoted to the senior ranks of M-H and thereafter hit the top rungs of a whole host of private and public sector positions.  "Donna mentored many women and inspired others," it goes on.  She chose not to mentor me, but she did inspire me to take absolutely no BS from male colleagues or bosses.

She had both flare and presence.  "When she entered the room, one would know she had arrived.  Never hesitant to point out one's grammatical faux pas or violation of etiquette rules, she also made sure her family and friends knew that following the proper dress code for every occasion was mandatory."  To all that I can attest.  While we were all sporting mini skirts, Donna was clad in a business suit.  However, when it came to grammar, I still copy her in this obsession.  Working at M-H, you had to have it all grammatically correct, or else the red pens would mercilessly attack your copy.

All the while I worked with Donna -- well, not really "with", just in the same building -- I assumed she had no children.  I knew she was married, but she kind'a kept that an irrelevant aspect of her life, choosing instead to hang out with the boys at the top who wielded the power.  Did she ever bring her husband along to social events?  Never, so neither did any of the other women.

But lo-and-behold, along with a husband -- whose name she never adopted, by the way -- Donna had four sons!  Well, blow me away!  Daycare?  Must have just handled it.  Time off when a kid was sick?  Didn't happen.  Leaving early for a parent-teacher interview?  Out of the question.

Donna, I bow to you.  You were truly the definition of the "liberated woman" 20 years before the rest of us even knew what it was all about!       

 

Ghoulish

So, they had to drag that cadaver Pastor Mansbridge from the crypt today to pronounce on Covid 19.  Gawd!  Why?  "This isn't like 9/11," he intoned.  OMG!  That was absolutely breathtakingly brilliant, pastor!  I had no idea! 

Here in Cowtown, the pools are closed.  Why?  Afterall, pools are really one, huge vat of hand sanitizer, are they not?  We should all just eschew the showers and go home covered in chlorine, but they have shuttered the pools, so that's that. 

Did a speedy booze-shop drive by today, even though I am on one of my regular cleanses.  Ralph privatized the liquor industry here a number of years ago, so there's one on every corner and they're all open.  I hear the LCBO is closed.  Wow!  Have they started rioting yet?!  Throwing caution to the winds, I even went out and got a haircut today.  No point in looking ugly while one is in lock-down. 

Declaring a "state of emergency" means governments can tap into bigger money pots, so that's the trick there.  But everything's still operating and if you keep your distance, you're OK.  Afterall, all we've heard from "experts" 24/7 is "wash your hands and maintain a social distance."  Done and done. 

 

Wet markets

That's where all these plaques, viruses, epidemics and pandemics start and this one is no different.  The black plague came out of the Gobi Desert in the middle ages, the Spanish flu, bird flu and SARS from China, etc., and now this.  And all because Asian cultures eat bizarre creatures, insects, reptiles, monkeys and birds which they purchase live, take home and kill in the kitchen.  Is this mainly to enhance sexual prowess?  Probably because there is a huge underground industry in the stuff here in North America. 

Just heard another genius medical "expert" on TV say, "The good news is that all cases are originally travel-related."  Well, duh!  Of course they're travel-related because the disease started in China, not here! 

Ah well, time to hunker down and eat leftovers.