yes you are right, Drek, the millions of dead are enough proof Trump had it wrong. I was writing the post and had the thought and it struck me as so funny I couldn't think any more but a bit later I remembered how the debate went - Trump, let's let her rip and keep the economy open. Other people, the economy won't keep open anyway as all the dead and dying will clog it up. and hey why not try something a bit more humane like vaccination first.
Back in the 80's any evening if you went outside here, the grass would be jumping with cane toads. We were all talking about how to stop the spreading plague of toxic toads, they are spawn of Satan horrible. They were deliberately introduced to Australia to eat the beetles in the sugar cane fields. and were spreading further and further South, it looked like they were going to take over the whole country and at one point they talked about bringing in a highly toxic viper who likes eating them. Thank God they decided against that! (They = CSIRO who were our government backed bastion of quality science at the time) anyway the point is nothing could be done about them, deep in the rainforest there are probably frogs that have gone extinct thanks to the cane toad without ever being counted by us. but it was obvious we were losing a lot of nice little frogs to these horrible ugly toads and getting grossed out in the process, I don't know what it is, they are ugly as sin, anyway methods went from the more humane - into the freezer, to using them for golf practise. Nothing worked and I don't think smoking their cured skin could have been that great as it didn't catch on. Some Queensland children made pets of them, this is despite the poisonous gland on their back, impressive isn't it. And they grew huge, like dinner plates.
Where are they now? still here, not so much of an issue any more, well I don't know for sure about Queensland but here the numbers have dropped dramatically and I think it's across the board. I don't know why exactly, there are some creatures that managed to learn how to eat them without dying, flip them on their back and avoid the poisonous gland. I don't know that that's the whole story though. It's fascinating, how did it happen. anyway so the parallel to the virus is the spread to an open area - the virus found us humans and the cane toads found Australia and they have gone from big sized ones jumping around on the lawn to small sized and largely hidden. and I wish the virus would do the same thing but I just have this feeling it's going to be one plague after another anyway.
