A roll of the dice.

There is one thing one can say about China, discipline, discipline, discipline. Once COVID-19 got a hold the lockdown from the authorities was severe, one may even describe it as brutal, I saw some of the videos. There is a resurgence of the virus in China and similar tactics look like they have worked.

In other more democratic nations, an authoritarian crack down would, I venture, not work for long, or at all. In Canada, it looks, fingers crossed, like we’re getting the virus under control. However, when I see pictures of crowded beaches and open spaces around the world it is little wonder that younger people are getting sick.

With a tanking economy, 1930s unemployment and in an election year, many U.S. states, encouraged by President Trump rolled the dice and went for reopening before virus cases were declining enough. After a couple of weeks of almost back to normal the number of COVID-19 cases has spiked alarmingly. At the time of writing worst hit states of Texas and Arizona, California, Florida and Arizona governors are backpedalling on opening up the economy further. What a waste, the human misery of getting sick the unnecessary deaths and all that effort to contain the virus only to throw it all away. I read there were 40,000 new cases in the U.S. nationwide in just one day on June 25.

President Trump has, jokingly, he says, bemoaned the amount of testing because the more you test, the more you find, which makes the numbers look bad. I’ve always thought, in a lot of places that this was a numbers game. While stats indicate U.S. cases are over 2.5 million I’ve read estimates that the true number may be 20 million. Many people will likely never know they had the virus or to how many they spread it to.

I guess Trump was gambling that he could get the economy significantly recovering by November. With the virus running out of control again in some places I think that’s going to be a tall order.

And now for something completely different. Should Canada stop the extradition process to the U.S. for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou? The recently disclosed legal arguments indicate that Canada can stop the process and presumably secure the release of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, but I don’t think it will. The process has started and I’m sure the official opposition parties are secretly relieved that this is not a crisis that they have to deal with. Perhaps the time to let Meng Wanzhou go was before she was arrested, we missed her, sorry. Now, backing off will look weak and risk the enmity of our biggest trading partner while relations are already soured with China.

Maybe the plan is to see who wins the election in November and hope for a different U.S. administration. In the meantime, I would not want to be in China with a Canadian passport.