Lessons from COVID

Here's another excellent article by contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk at The Tyee. Those of us who have been COVID-cautious this whole time will appreciate it. Those who dismiss COVID as a hoax or a cold won't heed the warnings.

"The 10 Chilling Laws of Pandemics. We’re stumbling blindly through a dangerous present towards an even grimmer future."

The whole column is a must-read for the explanation of each item, but here are those ten laws, as well as the summation:

"It is unlikely that improved funding and monitoring or any other technical fix will prepare the world for the next pandemic. Only humility could do that, and restoration of trust in shattered institutions. And right now society remains in a state of total denial about what happened with COVID and why pandemics matter. 

"Here then are 10 reflections on the meaning of one of history’s central makers.

1. Pandemics are immutable forces of history
2. Pandemics thrive on upheaval
3. Pandemics are social accelerators
4. Pandemics reflect the civilization in which they flourish
5. Pandemics erode trust
6. Pandemics always discriminate
7. Pandemics spawn irrational social movements
8. Pandemics possess long tails
9. Pandemics are biological icebergs
10. Pandemics don’t end with a political command or vaccines

"Pandemics retreat or fizzle out when society has wittingly or unwittingly addressed the social and ecological conditions in which they thrive. The great cholera outbreaks of the 19th century didn’t diminish until industrial elites built clean water and sewage works for the working class. COVID, an airborne virus, will likely dog us as long as we tolerate dirty air in poorly ventilated homes, hospitals, workplaces, schools and public transport.

"Although the technosphere appears to be done with COVID, the pandemic is not done with us. It will haunt our politics, our health and our psyches for years to come. It will echo, reverberate and erode our tattered social fabric. Welcome to the Age of Discord. "