Week 12: Lucky, I Guess

Like everyone else throughout the world, my last few weeks have been completely dominated by this virus. All concerns for everything else have drifted into the periphery and I, like many others, am left with the sinking feeling that I am not doing enough. After weeks of trying to get my parents, particularly my father, to stay at home, I think I have just now gotten through. I take them their groceries and do my best not to inadvertently infect them. Though my job has been exempted from the mass layoffs that are plaguing our economy, I chose to stay away for 2 weeks, reasoning that it was and is not smart to put myself around anymore people than absolutely necessary. I don’t know if I’ll get this thing, and if I should, I don’t know how it will affect me.

This I believe, is where our collective angst stems from. We don’t yet know enough about this disease to say definitively this is what you should and should not do. We can’t say what is safe and what isn’t. We can’t even determine (for various reasons) who has it and who doesn’t. All of this brings me to what issue I want to write in defense of here.

This particular war has already caught us unprepared. It appears to be one that is, if not winnable than at least survivable. The next one however, may not be. To that end, my issue is that we need to form an international health organization that has some real teeth to deal with something like this in the future. The WHO (World Health Organization) is a good start, but they need far more resources to really have an effect. I have heard politicians, scientists and public health experts alike call for a national stockpile of medical goods in the future to help alter another situation like this. This is a great idea, but it doesn’t go far enough.



I would want to expand this idea into having international medical stockpiles that are under the control of this new health organization. This organization alone would have the say to send these supplies wherever they are needed. If there’s an outbreak of malaria in sub Saharan Africa, they would send whatever resources are needed. Likewise with an outbreak of avian flu in Southeast Asia. Not forcing this organization to be beholden to any particular country would ensure that everyone gets a fair shake, and that it could truly stay neutral and out of politics.



I know that some people will think that I am being naive and foolish. That this too shall pass and we will all return to normality soon. I would simply remind them that a little over a month ago, the events of the last few weeks were unthinkable in the “developed” world. That we were somehow better than this. That we would figure it out where others could not. If the last 6 weeks have done anything, I hope that they have at least humbled us into knowing that anything is possible. That while we should still hope for the best, we have to prepare for the worst. If we can put aside our pride and do that, perhaps next time we can have the luxury of forgetting what this is like.