342 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 78 PART 3 MAY 2020
potentially infected tourists within their borders, camping at their airports,
or would they want them … anywhere else? Does a fever at the airport
mean you have COVID-19 or a bladder infection? I totally understand those
who board flights to Canada pretending they don’t have symptoms. In Cairo
or Rio, they’d possibly die if they truly had the COVID virus. In Canada,
they’d likely recover.
Other than New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Dr. Anthony Fauci,
American leadership under Donald Trump on COVID-19 has been abysmal.
Whereas Cuomo and Fauci deal in facts, Trump seems more interested in
calling COVID-19 a “Chinese virus” than in comforting Americans who are
sick or have lost family members or have lost their jobs. At the time of writing,
he wants the economy “open” by Easter, notwithstanding that doing so
may lead to a Spanish or Italian scenario. Other Republican politicians in
the U.S. have suggested that it is OK if old people die if it saves the stock
market.
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro is running a public relations campaign
to get Brazilians back to work, claiming that COVID-19 is just a little flu or a
hoax. So when I see Justin Trudeau’s measured responses every day on the
TV, I feel we are in far better hands than the Brazilians or the Americans.
Self-imposed quarantine and social distancing aren’t without some
moments of levity. There’s a joke going around that the Corona beer company
is offering to pay the World Health Organization $500 million to
rename the virus the “Heineken virus”. A drink called the “quarantini” is
making the rounds. It’s a regular martini; you just drink it by yourself. I
have posted to Facebook a wine tour that I’m taking, around my house.