The question is, are we at the fork in the road?

Covid 19 is just the start of our problems. In addition to the misery and uncertainty surrounding health issues we are about to face economic chaos. Retirement funds and small business will struggle for a long time.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said it best when he remarked. “Those at the lowest rank pay the highest price and when assistance is provided the money rarely gets that far down the chain.”

We all know the health issues so lets look at the other two serious concerns as part of the equation. First the economy. Tuesday it was reported that if the efforts to save the economy don’t work, US unemployment could easily reach 20%. Canada is vulnerable if that happens. It should be considered that during the worst year of the Great Depression: 1933 the rate of unemployment was 25%.

Should we be concerned? Yes.

So what we have is an economy potentially in tatters brought about by an out of control super bug. Personally I believe it’s worse than that – compounded by our poor environmental practices globally.

It is true the virus was there for a long time, it is part of a family of a kindred stains related to SARS etc. The problem is we as humans have damaged the ecosystems around us and weakened Mother Nature’s immune systems providing the inputs for mutations not before seen. Let me give but one example.

In the Okanagan farmers used to see a new invasive pest about every ten years. In the last fifteen year we see one every three to five years. Due to warmer winters these pests are allowed to survive over wintering with warmer temperatures.

We are now confronted with a virus with no known anti-body to control it. To make matters worse we have over used the anti-bodies we have for controlling established viruses. In many parts of the world extensive use of anti-bodies have been used in livestock.

The sooner we understand these things are all connected and have a bearing on our well being the sooner we will be able to prepare to repair our world’s immune system. We are reacting as opposed to being pro-active. The truth is we have to do more than buy a worlds supply of toilet paper.

Staying at home we might all think of ways to convince our governments and ourselves to think – long term.

Fred Steele