Lessons from Covid-19

Watching the Administration floundering like a fish out of water in the Covid-19 pandemic teaches Molokai a great lesson.

The Administration of the U.S. lags way behind the rest of the world in responding to the threat. Why is this? How can a nation that claims intellectual, economic, technological, and moral world supremacy fail to greet the pandemic with at least meaningful testing ?

This has happened largely because of the Administration’s refusal to recognize the significance of Covid-19. The news is still full of fools ranting against the Left for discussing the matter. It has even been suggested that Democrats and Liberals are intentionally damaging the economy by publicizing the issue. As a consequence, our society’s response to Covid-19 is rapidly turning into a debacle of failure that will cost thousands of lives.

This is not a political issue. It is a health issue.

We are now in deep doo-doo for the simple and sole reason that the Administration has approached it with a totally wrong-headed attitude.

Compare environmental degradation and its clearest expression in climate change. We’ve known about it for 30 years. Action to prepare for and to combat that threat has been suppressed for exactly the same reason that we have failed to defend against Covid-19 — climate change has been viewed as an economic issue and a political issue. It is not. It is an existential issue — meaning that, if we fail to respond, there will soon be no more organized human existence on Planet Earth.

Covid-19 will eventually take thousands of lives (perhaps more) and it will also eventually subside, as have all prior plagues in history. Meanwhile it’s a great lesson to us. Wake up, it says. Pay attention, it says.

The difference: climate change will not subside or go away. Even with immediate action we are cooked. Climate disruption (along with the destruction of air, water, reefs, icecaps, soil, and oceans) has already been guaranteed by our past abuse of resources. The best we can do is to mitigate and we better start today.

Kevin Brown