You’ve polluted my air, rivers, ground water, lakes and streams. You’ve hacked, burned and sliced away at my forests, plains, jungles and mountains to make room to fill your bellies and build your environmentally consuming cities. As if adding particulate emissions to the air weren’t bad enough, shortening the life expectancy of every air-breathing creature on earth, your power hungry, product-yearning ways have belched carbon-based gasses in such volume that they continue to cap the planet like a greenhouse, raising global temperatures with horrific consequences. You’ve over-hunted, over-fished and extinguished hundreds of species.
Your doctors have fought off my attempts to contain your over-sexed need to reproduce with their damned cures and vaccines. There are just too damned many of you. I’ve tried to foment wars, violent crimes and dissention so you can kill each other off. But even when you’ve provoked droughts, fires, floods and storms to decimate your numbers, there are well over seven billion of you… and this planet isn’t built to take even half that number. You won’t stop… so, here’s the deal: You liked SARS, MERS, Ebola… and do you even remember my first big hint a hundred years ago; you called it the “Spanish” Flu, even though it had nothing to do with Spain? Only offed a couple of million of you, but you reproduced from there. Like my pandemic now?
Hope you’re enjoying the novel coronavirus, because I just repealed the once every hundred years rule. And keep doing stupid stuff. I need you to die in vast numbers. Don’t wear masks. Party like there’s no tomorrow. Be friendly, and kiss and hug everyone you see. Open all your businesses, schools and gyms. Social distancing interferes with my plans. Blame other countries and think about going to war with them. And by all means, avoid coordinating and cooperating with each other to stop my plan!
As I said, there’re just too many of you, and you just won’t stop wrecking my planet. Remember, I started with nothing and do not care if I have to it again. On this planet, you are just one more mass of mobile protein supplements who believe that you are so smart that you can contain, and control Mother Nature. Good luck with that! You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! I have just begun.
Scientists and epidemiologists are constantly tracking evolving diseases, bacteria and viruses, all over the world. They have identified quite a few that are in that rare category where they can jump from animals to humans. ScienceFocus.com (May 25th) explains: “As our populations grow, we move into wilder areas, which brings us into more frequent contact with animals we don’t normally have contact with. Viruses can jump from animals to humans in the same way that they can pass between humans, through close contact with body fluids like mucus, blood, faeces or urine.
“Because every virus has evolved to target a particular species, it’s rare for a virus to be able to jump to another species. When this does happen, it’s by chance, and it usually requires a large amount of contact with the virus… Initially, the virus is usually not well-suited to the new host and doesn’t spread easily. Over time, however, it can evolve in the new host to produce variants that are better adapted.
“When viruses jump to a new host, a process called zoonosis, they often cause more severe disease. This is because viruses and their initial hosts have evolved together, and so the species has had time to build up resistance. A new host species, on the other hand, might not have evolved the ability to tackle the virus. For example, when we come into contact with bats and their viruses, we may develop rabies or Ebola virus disease, while the bats themselves are less affected.
“It’s likely that bats were the original source of three recently emerged coronaviruses: SARS-CoV (2003), MERS-CoV (2012) and SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the 2019-20 coronavirus outbreak. All of these jumped from bats to humans via an intermediate animal; in the case of SARS-CoV-2, this may have been pangolins, but more research is needed.”
Nature seems to be getting revved up to take on our explosive and disruptive humanity in a much more aggressive way. Writing an Op-Ed for the October 28th Los Angeles Times, Thomas J. Bollyky (director of the global health program) and Stewart M. Patrick (director of the global governance program at the Council on Foreign Relations) – they both are co-directors of the bipartisan CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on Preparing for the Next Pandemic – issue this dire, if not obvious, warning to us all:
“World leaders have called the coronavirus outbreak a ‘once-in-100-year’ crisis, but there is no reason to expect that to be true. A new outbreak could easily evolve into the next epidemic or a pandemic that spreads worldwide. As lethal as this coronavirus has been, a novel influenza could be worse, transmitting even more easily and killing millions more people… Better preparation must begin with an unvarnished assessment of what has gone wrong in the U.S. and in the global response to the current pandemic and what can be done to prepare for the next one when it strikes, as it inevitably will.
“Preparedness needs to start with investment. Despite multiple recent threats, from SARS (2003) to H5N1 (2007) to H1N1 (2009) to Ebola (2013-16); many blue ribbon reports and numerous national intelligence assessments; international assistance for pandemic preparedness has never amounted to more than 1% of overall international aid for health.
“The United States devoted an even smaller share of its foreign aid budget in 2019 — $374 million out of $39.2 billion — to prepare for a pandemic that has now cost the country trillions of dollars. Meanwhile, funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s support to states and territories has fallen by more than a quarter since 2002. Over the last decade, local public health departments have cut 56,360 staff positions because of lack of resources.
“Preparation isn’t only about investing more money. It is also about embracing the public health fundamentals that allowed some nations to move rapidly and aggressively against the coronavirus. The United States has been hard hit by this pandemic, but all countries were dealt this hand… But we can do better. Here are four measures, outlined in a new report from the Council on Foreign Relations, that would make Americans and the rest of the world safer.
“First, the United States must remain a member of the World Health Organization, while working to reform it from within. The agency is hardly perfect, but it prompted China to notify the world of the coronavirus and it has coordinated the better-than-expected response to the pandemic in developing nations. Yet, the agency has no authority to make member states comply with their obligations and less than half of the annual budget of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The WHO needs more dedicated funding for its Health Emergencies Program and should be required to report when governments fail to live up to their treaty commitments.
“Second, we need a new global surveillance system to identify pandemic threats, one that is less reliant on self-reporting by early affected nations. An international sentinel surveillance network, founded on healthcare facilities rather than governments, could regularly share hospitalization data, using anonymized patient information. Public health agencies in nations participating in this network, including the CDC, can assess that data, identify unusual trends and more quickly respond to emerging health threats.
“The U.S. should take the lead in forming a coalition to work alongside the WHO to develop this surveillance network. We should also work with like-minded G-20 partners, as well as private organizations, in this coalition to reduce unnecessary trade and border restrictions; increase the sharing of vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics; and work with international financial institutions to provide foreign aid and debt relief packages to hard-hit nations.
“Third, responding to a deadly contagion requires a coordinated national approach. Too often in this pandemic, in the absence of federal leadership, states and cities competed for test kits and scarce medical supplies and adopted divergent policies on reopening their economies. The next administration needs to clarify the responsibilities of the federal government, states and 2,634 local and tribal public health departments in pandemic preparedness and response. Elected leaders, starting with the president, must also put public health officials at the forefront of communicating science-based guidance and defend those officials from political attacks.
“Finally, the U.S. must do better by its most exposed and vulnerable citizens. More than 35% of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 have been nursing home residents. Many others have been essential workers, who are disproportionately Black and Latinx and from low-income communities. Federal, state and local governments should direct public health investments to these groups as a matter of social justice and preparedness for future threats.”
Conspiracy theories, denial, minimization of the threat, rejection of medical and scientific facts and the experts who can deal with them, plus an unwillingness to be realistic and allocate the necessary anticipatory resources and planning will kill millions and millions of humans. Failure to stem global warming will accelerate the process. Nature truly does not care. She has the laws of physics on her side. There isn’t a contrary opinion, an executive order or a legislative mandate that will change that. We either have to learn to live with that reality… or die with that reality.
I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States needs a ground-up rethink of its leadership structure, its preparedness, its willingness to accept reality and its ability to work with other nations to limit the damage… or allow an unnecessary horde simply die as directed.
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