Preparing For the Next Pandemic

FUTURE PANDEMICS are certain. They most likely will be caused by what caused the Covid 19 pandemic; human intrusion into wilderness and devastation of natural habitat, inspiring microbes to transfer from wild animal to human animal hosts. Based on how humanity has generally responded in fighting Covid 19, we are not and will not be ready for the next virus, but should seriously consider becoming ready just in case the next virus is of such potency and transmissibility as to have the potential to wipe out our entire species, a notion which is far from far fetched. There is a well known list of disasters which could wipe out humanity. They include collision between the Earth and a large asteroid, a global nuclear war, a supernova, biological warfare, alien invasion, and a viral pandemic. When you consider the extent of the devastation and death wrought by Covid 19, even in the presence of effective vacines, it is not at all difficult to to imagine a much more deadly, mutatable, and contagious virus exterminating the entire human race before a vaccine can be developedand distributed. According to scientists, such a pandemic is not only possible, not only likely, but inevitable. A suddenly emegergent virus, in the absences of vaccines, comprehensive, mandated social distancing, quarantining, and face mask wearing, combined with widespread political movments ardently opposed to the imposition of these measures, such as we have seen with the Covid 19 pandemic in many countries but particularly in the United States, yields a possible outcome almost too horrible to contemplate, including billions of deaths, economies and civilizations destroyed. And yet, considering current cultural characteristics, especially in the U.S., such a nghtmarish scenario seems quite likely. Nobody could possibly have predicted that a virus would kill nearly three quarters of a million people in the Untied States, even while more than sevently million people eligible for a safe, effecitve, and easily obtainable vaccination, would refuse to receive the vaccine, for a wide varitey of utterly fatuous and spurious reasons. And yet, that's exactly what happened, exactly what is still happening. Then too, the Obama administration, having been repeatedly warned about the probability of a viral pandemic, prepared an elaborately detailed plan book containing everything necessary to impement in the event the pandemic occurred. the Obama administration was ready and well prepared. The Trump administration, hell bent on undoing everything that Obama did merely because Obama did it, discarded the pandemic plan book. The lack of preparedness with regard to personal protective equipment, medical supplies, and pandemic health care planning was evident from the beginning of Covid 19, which, combined with an utterly corrupt, incompetent presidential administration under Trump, who refused not only to fight the virus but to even acknowledge its severity, and who insanely discouged social distancing and mask wearing, in defiance of science and common sense, doomed the United States to a staggering sickness and death toll as well as economic collapse. If for no other reason, we have reason to be optimistic about our chances of surviving the next pandemic, merely because Donald Trump will not be the president when it occurs.