According to the "wisdom" of the likes of Donald Trump and Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro, one would think that the current worldwide pandemic of COVID19 is little more than a mildly debilitating head cold, soon over.

I sometimes wonder how such complete idiots ever managed to get themselves elected to positions of extreme power. It took me weeks to recover from the shock of that dangerous wally Trump being voted into the position of leader of the free world. Bolsonaro was something else again. Brazil is a strange country, ruled until 1985 by a military junta, it was then governed by various civilian administrations until prospering under the left wing government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

As often happens in Latin American politics Lula, as he is affectionately known, left power in 2010 and now finds himself languishing in jail on a number of corruption charges. Jair Bolsonaro was elected to govern in 2018 on a Trumpian far right ticket and immediately set about undoing all that Lula and his successors had put in place. This included granting licences to farmers and ranchers to clear vast stretches of the Amazon rainforest for cultivation and exploitation.

But all that is as nothing compared to the idiot's attitude to the all-pervasive COVID19 outbreak in Brazil: "Just a little flu" was his mantra but this "mild" chill has to date, claimed the lives of 92,500 people - and rising - in his country. Second only to the US!

And, can you believe it? This clown is still advocating "business as usual". Unbelievable! But at least he hasn't suggested Trump's advice and put forward to his countrymen the idea to inject COVID sufferers with disinfectant or to take hydroxychloroquine by the bucketful.

And now I see we appear to be heading in the same direction here. Our Minister of Health advises great caution, while our PM appears to say "Ejja ha mmorru". We have been very lucky to have got off quite lightly... so far. I'm no expert but I would have thought that if science says "caution", then that is what we should be exercising. Heaven forbid that we should follow in the footsteps of a failed president of the US and a half-crazed Latino.

But to end on a slightly lighter note: I recently read that the wearing of face masks could be, as near as dammit, a permanent fixture in our lives for the foreseeable future. Which infers that we could be covering the lower reaches of our faces in public - and maybe private - for the rest of our lives!

And this made me think: Does this mean that cosmetic companies, specialising in manufacturing lipstick, go out of business? Will beards on men - or women for that matter - or any other form of facial hair become invisible and thus redundant? Will nose jobs become unnecessary? Will halitosis, smelling like putrefying flesh, become a thing of the past?

And on that last one; I wonder how long it will be before some enterprising business-person will patent the idea of putting perfume/cologne into face masks in order to convert the fetid stench of breath, akin to a Labrador's bottom, into the much more acceptable scent of lavender blossom.