This Week

Here we go again.

The world is looking at a third Covid-19 wave. That’s the richer nations of the world. The lesser developed nations are still wrestling with the first wave.

In the United Kingdom, it was billed as “Freedom Day,” time to celebrate the reopening from pandemic shutdowns. Instead, infection rates are skyrocketing and the Prime Minister is in isolation due to Covid-19 exposure. Worldwide the Delta variant of the virus is driving infections rates up, as least 12 percent in the last week. Nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia are struggling to get vaccines for their populations. Meanwhile they remain fertile ground for propagation of new Covid variants and exacerbating political and economic troubles in many unstable countries.

At home, the global pandemic is racing through the millions of Americans who have so far shunned the safe, effective and available Covid-19 vaccination. Officials, clerics, and thought leaders who were heretofore, skeptics, deniers or prevaricators have changed their tunes and are starting to encourage our fellow citizens to get the jab. This week the nation turned their eyes to Tennessee where a public health official, obviously a proponent of vaccinations, was sacked and State policy to limit vaccination promotion has been inexplicably curtailed. 

Meanwhile, heat domes have roasted the Pacific Northwest to astoundingly high temperatures — 116 degrees in Portland, Oregon? Wild fire season started early and is showing a new virulence in wide swaths of America’s West with smoke causing air quality warnings across the continent. Never seen before floods wracked Germany and Belgium, killing over one hundred and inflicting catastrophic damage.

On the international scene the President of China, the world’s second most powerful economy, warned “foreign forces” (I believe he’s talking about us) that push back would result in “heads based bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” Elements in Russia continue to unleash cyberattacks against the West. Afghanistan is teetering on the edge of Taliban return to power as they run amok across the country, even as the last of American troops head for the exits. Few have thought of the consequences there.

In our hemisphere Cuba and Haiti have had eruptions of historic nation-wide protests against repression and decapitation of the leadership, respectively. Is a mass Caribbean refugee crisis looming?

Welcome to the World of 2021.

Your World Affairs Council will continue to bring you programs and resources to aid in your understanding of what’s going on across the global landscape. We welcome your support as a member and donor.

Wishes for a safe and prosperous week.

Sincerely,

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