Men caused the coronavirus and they damage everyone

The UN secretary-general Antonio Gutterres has more or less blamed male leaders for the coronavirus pandemic, for bad management throughout the globe and for leading the world into situations which "damages everyone-women, men, girls and boys".

Gutteres' tweet.

He is clearly a very strong feminist and we can't blame him for that. It is still a male dominated world. The reason why I am mentioning it on this website is because this site is about animal welfare and the coronavirus was ostensibly caused by animal abuse, I think it is fair to say. It was caused by messing with nature to put it in very general terms. Either that or the Chinese deliberately started it in their Wuhan bio lab in order to gain advantage over the rest of the world. We know how aggressively ambitious they are and how they will stop at nothing to gain an advantage.

I must not digress. The point is that Antonio Gutterres has created a backlash from people who have suggested that he should resign; he is after all a man running a leading organisation and if he is so anti-men he should step down and allow a woman to lead the UN to a more peaceful and ameliorative planet.

Antonio Gutterres calls it a "millennia of patriarchy". I have to admit, however, that I don't think that the coronavirus pandemic would have happened if a woman was the president of China. Perhaps she would have placed greater restrictions on the wet markets of which there are 22,000 in China and where, it is thought, the pandemic started; the virus having originated in bats.

Mr Gutterres foresees a "horrifying global surge in domestic violence" due to the fear of the virus and the fallout from lockdown's combined with anxiety. There has indeed been an increase in domestic violence in the UK and I'm sure this applies to other parts of the world.

The coronavirus pandemic will fade but the virus will stay and the world will have to adjust. Deaths are being managed far better. Although infections are rising again in a second spike, deaths are remaining very low. I suspect that deaths from the virus are no higher than deaths from many other causes and therefore we should treat it as just another potential health problem. I don't think we can do anything else because we have to get on with living.

However, it is a great shame that we did not take the opportunity of the coronavirus pandemic to alter society dramatically. I wanted to see a great shift towards improving the welfare of the planet and of nature. It is an abuse of nature which caused the pandemic and therefore there is an obligation on humankind to alter its relationship with nature in their interests. Humans cannot keep distance from nature. We are part of it. We come from it. We must reconnect with nature and perhaps a woman leader may help us achieve that.

There is a possibility that in the USA, the president after Joe Biden (on the presumption that he makes it to the White House) might be a woman because his deputy is female. Perhaps we can look forward to a world which Mr Gutterres craves but don't bank on it.