I am as guilty as the next person in treating COVID like it is over. I was glad to shed the mask in public, although I do make an effort to keep my social distance. But, COVID is still there and will never go away completely. Who knows what other variations we could have in the immediate future even if most countries now treat it as endemic?
It was interesting to read that many scientists believe the principal cause for these animal to human viruses is the vast deforestation taking place all around the world. This National Geographic article was from 2019 before COVID broke out. The boundaries between the natural and man made environments have broken down and so we are now literally inheriting all the ills that come with it. The viruses travel from wild animals to domestic animals and then to humans. COVID was believed to have come from bats in China, with pigs as the intermediary of the virus. Now, there is a monkey pox creeping into Europe that normally would only be passed directly from animal to human, but is being passed human to human. We joke about it. Monkey pox memes have gone viral. However, it is clear that we need these natural boundaries. Unfortunately, rapacious greed trumps conservation.
Every year, the ultra-rich and influential titans of commerce meet at Davos to discuss the fate of the world. It's like a page out of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. They talk about all the world's ills and what they are going to do about them, but alas nothing ever gets done. They want the world to see how benevolent they are, inviting foreign leaders and a few well-meaning representatives from the general populace. The past few years they've talked about global warming and how we need to reduce our carbon footprint, but nothing has come from it. Just "blah, blah, blah," as Greta Thunberg said at last year's Cop26 meeting in Glasgow. The warnings have been there all along. They date back decades but it pretty much remains business as usual. You just wonder if they stage these events for our amusement.
Until we are confronted with a truly deadly virus like the one in the movie Contagion that kills hundreds of million people worldwide, it is doubtful we will see any real chance in policy. Governments figure they can contain these viruses to developing countries, like they have done with SARS and Ebola, but the refugee crisis, which topped over 100 million displaced persons this past month, brings these viruses closer to home.
Of course the answer many conservative lawmakers have is to close down their countries' borders, but even if we look at the recent wave of Ukrainian refugees. Most of them had no COVID vaccines. Ukraine had limped along in this regard before the war broke out. The two families we are hosting hadn't had their vaccines. One family got their vaccine as they plan to emigrate to the United States and it is required in their visa applications. I don't know about the other. When overwhelmed by one crisis, you forget about the other. Additionally, there is no real way to shut down the borders. People get through on a daily basis.
It seems we need to look at the world as a whole, not as separate little nation states with their problems that they have to sort out on their own. Most of the problems are the result of rapacious greed that keeps one country down at the expense of another. African nations have struggled to develop largely because Western countries see them as nothing more than mining opportunities and sources of cheap labor. Western leaders make little if any effort to lift the standard of living in these African countries. Content to keep costs down so that they can continue to supply cheap goods to Western countries. China is just the same in this regard, as it competes to become a dominant economic power. It's only been in recent years that a Chinese delegation has been invited to Davos, and treated as a distant cousin.
Yet, we have to work together if we really want to tackle the problems that are affecting us globally, not vilify each other over an outbreak that was decades in the making. From the beginning of this pandemic, I was stunned by the way everyone wanted to blame this virus on China. Trump repeatedly called it the "Chinese virus." We had ample warning, but no one did anything until it was too late, and so we suffered through the worst pandemic since the Spanish flu.
I can still recall the shock over the number of deaths in northern Italy, one of the initial hot spots in Europe. Lithuania immediately sealed off its borders, locked down the country, hoping to contain the virus at home, but it spread here like it did everywhere else.
Now, we act like it's over and we can go back to our lives as if everything is normal again. This after a respiratory disease that killed over 6 million persons worldwide. A virus that impacted virtually every family in the world, leaving scars that will last a lifetime. You just really wonder how people can forget so quickly. The face mask now relegated to museum exhibitions.
Yet, the same basic problem remains. Until we come to terms with our planet, or Spaceship Earth, as Bucky Fuller called it, we are destined to have these pandemics repeat themselves. Not only that, we will find ourselves living on an increasingly hostile planet that will force us at one point or another to reconsider how we occupy it. Floods are increasing. Hurricanes increase in magnitude and frequency. Super volcanoes are on the verge of eruption. There is little doubt many of us will see an earth-shattering cataclysm within our lifetimes. This is why young persons like Greta Thunberg speak out, as they are more likely to experience this than old farts like me.
The super-billionaires dream of space travel and colonizing Mars when the vast majority of us will have to gut it out on Earth, bearing the consequences of their actions. Rather than seek alternatives to lithium, robber barons like Elon Musk are now open to exploring new mining options. The same guy extols the 72-hour work week at his gigafactory in China, claiming Americans don't work hard enough. Turns out Tesla was really nothing more than a PR device, one that has made him billions so that he can play with rockets.
Greed remains the driving force in our worldwide economy. Until we bring it under control, there really is no hope for us. We will just keep moving between catastrophe to catastrophe, looking for ways to lessen the impact without really doing anything about it. Rather than giving us a moment for reflection, COVID just seems to have brought out an even more rapacious drive as we see speculation sky rocket with inflation at its highest levels since the 1980s. I can't believe how expensive living in Vilnius has become, and can only imagine what it is like in other cities around the world.
I'd like to think we will come to our senses at some point, but as long as we continue to let robber barons control our fates there isn't much hope. We will take whatever little scraps they throw to us, hoping that somehow things will get better. I just hope this next generation takes their fate into their own hands, and not let themselves be led by megalomaniac billionaires.
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