Geneva, Tuesday 14 April 2020

Golfers and non-golfers alike will find Rick Reilly’s exposé of Donald Trump’s behaviour on the golf course both amusing and horrifying. It is essential reading if you want to understand the three-plus years of bluster, lies and seemingly inexplicable statements and decisions of POTUS45 that we have, on a daily basis, come to expect.

The BBC’s North America editor, John Sopel, was present at Trump’s pandemic press briefing yesterday. Sopel described the President’s dialogue with the media as “combative” and the whole event as “the most dizzying, jaw dropping, eyeball popping I have ever attended.” And this most experienced journalist has, as he says, sat in on some corkers! Most astounding was Trump’s statement that “the President of the United States calls the shots” and that he has “total power” to lift restrictions overriding advice from public health experts and whatever decisions might be made at State level. 

It looks like we’re heading fast towards a pivotal phase in the playing out of this pandemic: how and when to lift the current restrictions on our lives so permitting a near-stalled economy to be revitalised without a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and accompanying deaths. China, South Korea, Spain, Italy, Austria, Poland and Japan have all eased some restrictive measures or are about to do so. World leaders are coming face to face with the difficulty of the balancing act they are caught up in. Tellingly, Japan’s Hokkaido – having been in a state of emergency before – had arrived at near zero cases. Restrictions were lifted and now there has been a rapid resurgence of cases and the island is back under a state of emergency. The World Health Organisation has yesterday recommended six criteria that should be fulfilled before a country can lift restrictions. Maybe only South Korea and New Zealand could fulfil these criteria at present. Most other countries will ignore the WHO’s advice. Mr Trump will belittle it maybe because of his self-declared natural abilities in the domain of public health. 

I wish we could put the USA aside in this story. But we can’t. First, in terms of numbers the USA currently holds top spot by far; second, as we are all well aware, what happens in the USA economy affects us all. It is clear that despite staggering and only just levelling figures for COVID-19 cases and deaths, their focus is very soon going to be on economic recovery. This could get messy. 

I really don’t want this Diary to be seen as an opportunity for yet more Trump-bashing. But…. how the USA plans to tiptoe through this policy minefield is far from clear. What is clear is that this tiptoeing will prove to be of world changing importance. From my perspective, it is unimaginable and knee-tremblingly scary that this is going to be decided upon and managed by a man who cheats at golf! 

I would have arrived in New Zealand today but for this pandemic. Here’s a pinnacle moment on a previous trip: finding a blue penguin on what must be one of the world’s wildest beaches.

Geneva, Monday 13 April 2020

We are now into our fifth week of lockdown. Whilst I am getting used to it, the background noise of anxiety is just a bit louder each day.

This morning was fine and clear. It seems as though everything turned green overnight. With this spell of unusually warm weather, the pariah kites (a sub-species of black kite – Milvus migrans) have arrived from Africa for their summer hols hereabouts. They’ll be wheeling overhead in great numbers for the next five months before heading south again.

Amid agitated craws and screeches, a newly arrived kite got into one the crows’ nests in the pine tree right in front of our balcony. We couldn’t see if it was able to grab a nestling but it was seen off by the crows with some vim. The same kite with three of his buddies circled over and around the tree for a good half hour afterwards while the crows flew back and forth making a great din. All this during our daily putting competition!

It seems that everyone has gone down the bread-making route. In our local Coop, there is plenty of bread but flour is now as rare as toilet paper was four weeks ago. 

Fortunately, our stocks are just sufficient to allow my wife to adventure into her first ciabatta. Delicious! All this while Boris the sourdough-starter bides his time in a quiet corner being lovingly fed and watered. The big moment of truth – when we find out if he has got what it takes to make one big sourdough bloomer – will come later this week assuming we can find the flour.

Another moment of truth looms. A number of countries, Spain for example, are moving towards relaxing their self isolation / social distancing measures in the next three weeks. Rest assured, the lifting will be in stages and we will all just have to wait and see whether or not each stage brings a resurgence of cases of COVD-19; if so, re-imposed restrictions are likely. Even though this is light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel stuff, it will be quite the balancing act for those making these decisions. As if to dampen our spirits, China announced today a new rise in cases due to their own nationals returning home. Mr Putin has admitted that Russia has a problem.

I should point out that, whilst I can’t stomach the man’s politics, I was very pleased to hear that the other Boris – the Prime Minister chappy – left hospital yesterday. A headless conservative party in government is a more frightening spectre than one with him in charge. Go, Boris! Back on that horse! After such glowing tributes to the care given to you by NHS staff, you’ll really have to fulfil your election promises to them now.

The putting: Not being as distracted as I was by the kite-crow kerfuffle, my wife beat me 1 – up. Just shows the importance of being able to concentrate! Overall, I’m still up 14 games to 7. At least two weeks to go, though!

Hoping you are all well, safe and calm.

Geneva, Easter Sunday (12 April) 2020

Let’s stay with the theme of lies and truth. Yesterday, I went off on epidemiological statistics about this pandemic being manipulated or misrepresented. This is nothing compared with the big league of bio-untruths: political propaganda and conspiracy theories.

A number of people have asked me about the possible origin of this particular coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Is it really from a wild animal food market in Wuhan? Is it from bats? Is it from a pangolin? Is it linked to the biosecurity lab in Wuhan? Was there a governmental cover-up in the early stages of the epidemic there? Was it imported to China from America? My only credentials for commenting on this come from having worked on the project “Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity” during my time with the International Committee of the Red Cross; this involved no small interaction with states’ representatives to the UN’s 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (Full title: Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction. Let’s just say “BWC.”) This is a disarmament convention of the highest importance to international security and therefore to humanity; this is why 183 nations are party to it. Within the BWC discourse, genuine concerns and well-founded suspicions can be voiced although most can only be viewed through smoke and mirrors. It is also a field that attracts a whole host of conspiracies and fallacies; you get used to these and learn to recognise them from a safe distance.

The BWC has an interesting history. It was first proposed to the international community by the USA because American scientists managed to convince the Nixon administration that biological weapons were of no military value as long as they, the USA, had nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union saw the wisdom of this and eagerly came on board (but carried on with their bio-weapons programmes anyway.) In rather typical disarmament double-dweeble, biological weapons became known as the poor man’s nuclear weapon whilst nuclear weapons states claimed they needed their nuclear weapons to deter any threat of use of biological weapons. Within this, the health community (read WHO) whilst understandably wishing to avoid getting mired in the international security implications, stipulated that whether the cause of an epidemic was natural or man-made, the public health response would be the same. This is a stance that I have always fundamentally disagreed with. If an epidemic were ever seen as an intentional act of a state, group or individual, the reaction would obviously involve a public health element but this would be embedded in and ultimately subsumed by a huge security response that would not exclude use of military force. Making a distinction between a natural outbreak and the intentional spread of disease is very, very important. 

Here are my thoughts. This pandemic is serious enough. We do not need American commentators saying the virus came from a Chinese bioweapons lab and we do not need Chinese commentators saying the virus originated in an American bioweapons lab. Both sides know that such claims represent barely veiled accusations of violation of the BWC. No state takes this lightly. Raising the spectre of bioweapons in relation to this pandemic through accusation is very, very dangerous. 

The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, a good man who doesn’t miss a trick, addressed the Security Council three days ago. The sixth of eight risks to international security he identified in relation to the pandemic was that “the weaknesses and lack of preparedness exposed by this pandemic provide a window onto how a bioterrorist attack might unfold – and may increase its risks. Non-state groups could gain access to virulent strains that could pose similar devastation to societies around the globe.” Those familiar with BWC speak will recognise that this is as close as he can go to making reference to state-backed bio-weapons programmes. He knows that the line between state on “non-state” activity in this domain is not clear and bright; he also knowns that if a non-state actor were to use a biological warfare agent to intentionally spread disease, the most likely source of that agent would be a state programme.

So above you have my thoughts about the propaganda, theories and all other loony-baloony stuff that is circulating like the virus itself. Here is my advice. Bear in mind that any assessment of whether or not there’s a sinister cause for this outbreak can only be made authoritatively by a UN Security Council mechanism and that would involve a neutral stance, a ton of diplomacy, the best of science, the coolest of heads and time. Don’t believe anything unless it comes direct from Mr Guterres.

Given the above, it may seem to be of little import but… I won the putting competition today on the first play-off hole. That’s 14 games to 6.