I am also firmly in support of Whickwithy’s observation about Trump. A more corrupt man it would be difficult to find. America is a constant opponent of Russia and although Putin himself is corrupt, his evil is mostly driven by ideology. Trump’s is purely one of avarice, narcissism and greed.

On the 5g question, I don’t feel particularly at risk from it for the simple reason that my area seems remarkably safe from 4g signals. As soon as 4g becomes a regular visitor to my garden, I will give 5g more thought.

I accept your position is carefully researched and hard won, even if I disagree with it, PG. I only wanted to add, the following thoughts:

As you say, people get corona viruses, but we've never seen anyone with COVID19 before - so far as we know. I daresay a few isolated people in the areas of origin got it without being detected, and without spreading it widely. It's only when it popped up in circumstances where it would spread widely that the epidemic began and epidemiologists took notice.

In this regard too, this is how HIV got going. Retrospectively, we can now trace it back to decades before the worldwide spread began. It was only when the dissolution of traditional social structures took hold in West Africa and people from previously distant communities started regularly to have sex together that HIV was able to spread widely.

Like the suggestion that COVID19 is just an opportunistic infection that takes hold in people who are immune compromised for other reasons, there were people back iun the 80s arguing that HIV was a harmless, opportunistic infection that took hold only in people who were already sick. Robert Duesberg became well known for this view. Jad Adams popularised it in a book, saying that the real problem was "the gay lifestyle".

Some gay men with the infection in the developed world who agreed with this were able to stay well for many years without taking antivirals like zidovudine. They were able to compensate by eating extremely healthy diets, and generally having optimal living conditions. But for many of the people I worked with in Africa, these views were catastrophic. Living in desperate poverty, refusing zidovudine and instead relying on weird "herbal" remedies meant they died very fast. By contrast, in recent years, people with HIV in those same communities who were able to access the new combination therapies have stayed well. COVID19 looks exactly like HIV and the solutions will be similar - stop ripping into populations of wild animals for food, be thoughtful about intimate contact with other people, and listen to the science.

I'm lecturing now, which wasn't my intention. I just wanted to make some connections.