The coronavirus has just found another fertile environment. For weeks, the 2 million Palestinians crammed into Gaza have hoped and prayed that the virus would not breach the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of this Eastern Mediterranean open-air prison. Those days are over.

Racial discrimination has been hardwired into the US from its very foundation. The earliest founding fathers, the Puritans in New England, believed that they were superior to everyone else, including Native Americans.

Had Dante witnessed the suffering of the people in Eastern Ghouta, he might have rewritten his “Inferno.” Pancaked, besieged, and reduced to rubble — his immortal line is perhaps apt: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Many people, even some governments, think the Cambridge Analytica scandal does not really affect them. They may not have a Facebook account, or, if they do, barely use it.   Some do not care that their data has been shared without their consent.