The Virus Map Text and art by Alan McKee ©2020 all rights reserved, may not be reproduced or republished without written permission www.alanmckee.com
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elieve it or not, this is a real map. It’s a map of how humanity, or at least the Canadian government (and a few others) reacted to the virus designated as Covid 19 back in 2020. It’s kind of pretty, unless you know how to read it and what it shows. Then, it’s not so pretty. The straight part on the left charts the actions of the Chinese government. Wham! Do not pass Go. Do not say or do anything we don’t like or... Bam...the straight line to...well, we don’t know exactly where. Some of the tighter curves that kind of seem to double back on themselves are representative of Donald Trump’s U.S. Presidency: they meander, double back on themselves, change colour (more on the colours in a moment).
There are places where some of the lines kind of look like that hat he kept trying to sell people. Then, there’s some of the looser more meandering curves. Those are the Canadian government. At first they looked kind of nice, well formed, thought out, etc. But then if you follow them out, they start to unravel. And pretty soon, you realize they don’t go anywhere at all. The upshot is that maybe, just maybe, if there are any future world wide catastrophes, Canada will actually be able to do something about it instead of taking goods that nobody else wants, like the Astra Zeneca vaccination for Covid 19. Now for the colours: basically colours tending toward the bluish range are relatively good (relatively)...good in the sense that the number of deaths are toward the low side (comparatively). The reddish and (horrors) the yellow are at the opposite end of the spectrum and show catastrophic stupidity. Countries like the US, Italy, France and the UK account for a lot of the yellows and reds. Russia is green. Not too cool,not too hot. Pretty good, actually. Russia looks pretty good, as long as you’re not some billionaire who made deals more profitable than those belonging to the current leader. Most of the so-called Third World, the poorest and least powerful didn’t even make it onto the Virus Map. They simply couldn’t take any actions at all. The good news is that they didn’t suffer as much as some of their wealthy neighbours. Of course they’ll probably end up with poor medical care, but they’ve been living with that forever. What’s kind of hard to see is how the individuals who made up a lot of governments tried to plot courses whose primary benefit was to enhance the position of the individuals without really doing anything for the country. Oh, there were a couple in Canada who seriously tried to do something but found themselves tripping over the lack of foresight of earlier governments: like not having any manufacturing of anything that was owned by and for Canada and Canadians. The United States, with the highest mortality rates in the world, really twists and turns. That’s because the situation in the U.S. was obscured by the former President pitting his most violent followers against a majority who just wanted the pandemic to end and didn’t have any real opinions about anything. So, pretty as the coloured lines and squiggles above may be, they reveal a lot of not very nice facts about the way the pandemic was managed by those who had any ability to act, the so-called leaders.
What’s the take-away from looking at the Virus Map? Well, as I said at the beginning, it looks kind of pretty unless you know what it means. Then, this Virus Map is not pretty at all. Let’s hope humanity can chart a more positive course in the future.